The federal loan program is limited to smaller businesses – firms that in the energy field have been the most vulnerable to the downdrafts that even before the pandemic were running counter to the general growth in the national economy.

Several of the firms were in serious financial straits; for them, the loans are at least a temporary lifeline, but not a solution to their problems. They come against the head winds of sharp stock declines, millions of dollars in losses over the past year, and large global surpluses of oil, coal and gas.

Lenders wouldn’t normally do business with companies that may be on the road to bankruptcy. But the emergency loan effort – called the Paycheck Protection Program – is different.

Its purpose is to pump money into the economy, keeping employees on the payroll and making it possible for businesses to pay their bills and survive what was expected to be a relatively short-term period of revenue loss, said Ann Marie Mehlum, an Obama-era official of the Small Business Administration, which is administering the loans. A PPP loan, according to the sponsors of the Cares Act, which created the program, is essentially supposed to be a grant, extended with the expectation that it will be forgiven.

One recipient – a coal mining company called Rhino Resource Partners, of Lexington, Kentucky – informed the Securities and Exchange Commission in its annual report for 2019 that it might not be able to survive to the end of 2020. Its share price has cratered and its losses mounted. On April 29, it received a maximum $10 million emergency loan thanks to the PPP effort.

A few other companies, on the other hand, have received loans even while business seems to be looking up.

Most striking in that group is Gulf Island Fabrication, of Houston, which received a $10 million PPP loan as it was also closing on a $129 million Navy contract to build two towing, salvage and rescue vessels.

The company did not respond to requests for comment.

“In this challenging and uncertain time, the PPP Loan proceeds provide necessary liquidity to defray payroll and benefit costs, including maximizing our ability to retain our workforce, execute our current backlog and compete for new project awards,” Gulf Island’s CEO, Richard Heo, was quoted as saying in a company news release. “We have already used a portion of the borrowed funds to return a number of employees we had furloughed at the onset of the pandemic and we have retained additional employees we would have had to furlough or terminate without such funds.”

For the first three months of this year, as the pandemic was setting in, the company reported $5.9 million in income on $78.6 million in revenue.

And UR-Energy, a uranium company based in Littleton, Colo., was awarded an $893,000 loan though the spot price of uranium has jumped 30%, imports are down, and demand is steady. Its workforce remains “healthy and fully employed,” the company said.

The loan comes as the Trump administration has been moving to shore up the domestic uranium industry.

The purpose of the PPP loans is to support two months’ worth of employment amid the coronavirus pandemic. If companies spend at least 75% of the loan money on wages and benefits, and the rest on ordinary overhead charges, up to 100% of the loan will be forgiven. Guidance by the Treasury Department cautions that recipients have to show that the loan is necessary to continue operations, and that there aren’t available alternatives.

Companies have until the end of the day Monday to return loans if they decide they can’t meet that standard. One energy firm, Dawson Geophysical, of Midland, Texas, announced that it will repay the $6.4 million loan it received in April.

UR-Energy said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that “we believe we will be able to meet the [loan] program requirements.”

Most of the other energy companies surveyed by The Washington Post have considerably weaker prospects, and would struggle to secure additional credit, as investors have largely turned away from the sector.

The PPP program, as a result, has put the federal government in the position of funneling money into companies with decidedly problematic balance sheets. And all but one of the 21 companies surveyed received considerably more than the average loan for all sectors, which in the first round in April was $206,000. Eleven firms received more than $5 million, which puts them in the top quarter of 1 percent of all loans.

Two companies – ENGlobal Corporation, of Houston, and Profire Energy, of Lindon, Utah – have been informed that their stock price has fallen so low that they are set to be delisted by the Nasdaq exchange. Amplify Energy, of Houston, has been similarly notified by the New York Stock Exchange.

Profire, an oil field technology company, got a $1.1 million loan. ENGlobal, an engineering services firm that warned at the end of 2019 that it has no access to credit, received $4.9 million. Amplify, an oil and gas producer that has seen its stock drop 88% in the past 52 weeks, got $5.5 million. It lost $35 million last year on revenue of $276 million, even as it was spending $26 million in a stock buyback.

Another energy company that bought back its own stock last year, Independence Contract and Drilling, of Houston, nonetheless saw its share price decline 80% leading up to the onset of the pandemic. It received a $10 million PPP loan.

Rhino Resource Partners, the company that had warned it might not be able to stay in business, operates coal mines in Appalachia, Illinois and Utah, and it has been hammered by the low price of competing natural gas and the sharp falloff in demand for coal. Between its high point in 2019 and Feb. 13, when the stock market started to crash, the share price for the firm had already dropped by 65%.

“The firm was in terrible financial shape before the collapse of coal demand and gas prices; the current pricing environment only exacerbates that issue,” Anthony Campagna, global director of fundamental research at ISS EVA, a corporate analytics firm, wrote in an email. “The firm has not sustainably earned above its cost of capital (creating economic value) in nearly a decade.”

Until 2014, it was run by David Zatezalo, now the assistant secretary of labor in charge of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. His office said he has no current connection to the company, and did not take part in any conversations or correspondence concerning the PPP loan.

In a follow-up phone call, Campagna said, “They’re getting hit from all angles. Hemorrhaging cash. It’s not pretty.”

The company reported losing $100 million last year on $181 million in revenue.

Rhino lists employment at 605 workers, but it has idled at least some of its mines. (The standard limit for receiving an SBA loan is 500 employees, but mining companies and some other firms can go above that.)

The company was assessed fines of $411,000 last year for safety violations. Most – 191 – were for “alleged violations of health or safety standards that could significantly and substantially contribute to a serious injury if left unabated.” Two were for more serious threats to safety and one was for delaying the abatement of a violation. The mine that was cited most often, the Riveredge Mine in Calhoun, Kentucky, was abandoned in November, Laura McGinnis, spokeswoman for the Mine Safety and Health Administration, wrote in an email.

Violations at other company mines continued this spring, even as Rhino was applying for the loan. At its Hopedale mine in Ohio, where 125 miners are employed, repeated inspections spurred by higher-than-normal methane leakages turned up 41 violations through the end of April, according to records of the Mine Safety and Health Administration.

Numerous requests for comment from Rhino have gone unanswered.

Campagna notes that the point of the PPP loans is “not to pick winners and hurt losers,” but to keep workers employed.

Could Rhino have received an ordinary $10 million loan? “Absolutely not,” he said.

“SBA is following the law as it executes the PPP program as defined by the CARES Act passed by Congress,” wrote Carol Wilkerson, a spokeswoman for the Small Business Administration, in an email, in response to a question as to the advisability of lending money to a company in as much difficulty as Rhino.

Another coal company, Indiana-based Hallador, saw its stock price drop by 79% before the pandemic hit. The company hired former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt as a lobbyist last year. It, too, received a maximum $10 million PPP loan.

Of the 21 companies surveyed, one has seen its stock price go up over the past year: EVO Transportation and Energy Services, of Peoria, Arizona, which has a contract with the U.S. Postal Service to haul mail in trucks with alternative fuels. It received a $10 million loan.

The other 20 firms saw their stock prices decline by an average of 47% from last year’s high to the eve of the pandemic crash. During that same period, ending Feb. 23, the Dow Jones average climbed nearly 20%.

When the current PPP loans have run their eight-week course, sometime in June or early July, those companies will at best have postponed their financial problems – and the economy overall promises to be less healthy than it was before the virus hit.

“We have a history of operating losses and have used significant amounts of cash for operations and to fund our acquisitions and investments,” Acorn Energy, of Wilmington, Delaware, which owns electric power plants, declared in an SEC filing. “The market price of our common stock has fluctuated substantially in the past and is likely to continue to be highly volatile and subject to wide fluctuations. During 2019, our common stock traded at prices as low as $0.20 and as high as $0.45 per share.”

Acorn received a $461,000 loan.

Capstone Turbine, of Van Nuys, California, has never made an annual profit since its founding in 1988, running up a deficit of $879 million over the years. It got a $2.6 million loan.

The company said it was laying off 3,000 workers and shuttering or consolidating 40 offices across the globe, including a large office in San Francisco that would be absorbed by a new headquarters.

Combined with earlier cuts of 3,700 employees this month, the latest layoff means Uber has trimmed its workforce by 25 percent since the coronavirus outbreak. It says rides have been down 80 percent and have only just begun to recover.

Uber has made up for some of that lost business with a surge in its food delivery service, Uber Eats, but the business hasn’t been enough to keep the struggling app afloat.

“I wanted there to be a different answer,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote in an email to employees, which was shared by the company. “Ultimately, I realized that hoping the world would return to normal within any predictable time frame, so we could pick up where we left off on our path to profitability, was not a viable option.”

For Uber, the layoffs were the latest blow to a business that was under pressure to cut costs and improve efficiency after going public last year, in a late spring stock market listing. The initial public offering was followed by three rounds of layoffs, internal belt tightening and escalating prices as consumers saw heavily subsidized trip discounts disappear.

The coronavirus has put pressure on the company to cut back on experimental projects and unproven businesses in areas such as self-driving and micromobility, which represented longer investments with little immediate upside for the company’s bottom line.

Khosrowshahi announced Uber would reorganize certain teams around its core businesses: giving rides and making deliveries.

Tech companies that are based on the so-called sharing economy, including Uber, Lyft and Airbnb, have taken a hit amid the coronavirus outbreak as consumers have opted to heed shelter-in-place orders. That means consumers have also been less likely to share rides with strangers, ride in private vehicles or lodge in homes and apartments listed by independent hosts.

Uber’s layoffs follow similar cuts at rival Lyft, which announced a 17 percent reduction in its workforce in April. Airbnb laid off 1,900 earlier this month.

The State Enterprise Policy Committee, chaired by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, decided on Monday to force the national carrier to file for bankruptcy and rehabilitation under the court’s process.

THAI is listed on the stock market and has been in financial trouble for many years, and now, with the Covid-19 crisis, things have become worse.

Deputy Prime Minister Anuthin Charnvirakul said THAI may lose its status as state enterprise once it starts going through the rehab procedures set by the Bankruptcy Court. Once that happens, the State Enterprise Committee will no longer have authority over the carrier, though the manager of the rehabilitation will have the power to manage the airline’s business restructuring plan.

The airline will be able to continue operating while its debts and businesses are being restructured, and it will not have to service debts during that time.

Narumon Pinyosinwat, government spokesperson, said it is still not clear whether the airline’s bankruptcy case will be filed in a Thai or foreign court.

However, an informed source at the Transport Ministry said the case should go to a Thai court even though 30 per cent of the airline’s Bt200 billion debt is owed to foreigners.

Some sources suggested that the government file the case in the United States in order to stop foreign creditors seizing THAI airplanes when they land on foreign soil.

The Transport Ministry source, however, said there should be no such problem if THAI can negotiate with its foreign creditors, most of whom have leased planes to the airline.

Meanwhile, Nares Puengyam, leader of the THAI trade union, voiced concern about the airline potentially losing its status as state enterprise.

“The union agrees with the plan to rehabilitate via the Bankruptcy Court’s process, but we do not agree with the proposal to reduce the Finance Ministry’s stake by 2 per cent,” he said.

The Finance Ministry currently holds a 51.03 per cent stake in the airline, but if its holding is cut to below 50 per cent, THAI will no longer be a state enterprise.

Nares said he was worried that this would adversely affect the company’s credit rating and push up the cost of future borrowing.

Officials, however, say that once THAI becomes a private entity, it will find it easier to restructure by cutting redundant staff, slashing wages as well as cancelling perks offered to the local elite and efficiently managing its costs as a whole.

A recent news report suggested that the Finance Ministry may sell some of its stake to Vayupak Fund, an investment vehicle that was set up by the ministry, which will inject fresh funds into the airline.

Initially, THAI management had proposed that the Finance Ministry borrow Bt50 billion to finance the ailing airline, but the plan was rejected.

Royal Caribbean had plenty of ships to offer. The problem? S&P Global Ratings had slashed its credit grade to junk, and the cruise company was expecting Moody’s Investors Service to follow. With those downgrades came steep restrictions on how much of its assets could be pledged to bondholders. The firm knew it needed more than the $1.66 billion of secured debt it would be permitted to raise to get through the crisis.

Miami-based Royal Caribbean ultimately found a new structure that would let it sell more than $3 billion of debt linked to ships without running afoul of restrictions known as covenants embedded in its existing debt documents. It sold half of the debt as a traditional secured offering, and gave investors priority guarantees in the form of ship stock pledges for the rest.

“We felt this was a creative way to access liquidity,” Chief Financial Officer Jason Liberty said in an interview with Bloomberg. “Investors knew we were securing with very strong assets, while we kept the flexibility to go back for more liquidity if we need to.” The company plans to regain its investment-grade ratings as soon as it can, he added.

A representative for Morgan Stanley, which led the deal and devised the structure, declined to comment.

The Royal Caribbean offering highlights a challenge that an unprecedented number of so-called “fallen angels” may face as they seek funding as high-yield companies after losing investment-grade ratings. Some have especially strict covenants that can make selling secured debt difficult. A record 24 companies have lost high-grade status this year, according to S&P, and another 111 worldwide remain at risk of being junked.

“Investor appetite for the Royal Caribbean deal might encourage similar deals like this going forward,” said Alexander Diaz-Matos, an analyst at credit research firm Covenant Review. “I think the lawyers are examining the documents now and seeing what they can do.”

When Royal Caribbean began marketing its $3.32 billion offering last Wednesday, it said the deal was secured. But there was a catch laid out to investors as a footnote in deal documents: Only half of the bonds were actually backed by assets including 28 of the cruise liner’s ships worth around $12 billion, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be named discussing a private transaction. If an investor purchased $10 million of the offering, they would effectively receive $5 million of secured bonds and $5 million of unsecured debt.

Few investors would be willing to take on unsecured bonds — which are further back in line for repayment in a bankruptcy or restructuring scenario — linked to an industry in crisis. Money managers have even turned up their noses at collateral they view as less than pristine. United Airlines Holdings Inc. yanked a bond offering earlier this month amid investor concern that the planes backing the debt were too old.

To create more investor protections, Royal Caribbean gave buyers priority guarantees in the form of stock pledges tied to the units that owned each ship. That effectively put investors second in line, behind themselves, to access remaining ship collateral if the company fell into even harder times.

If Royal Caribbean recoups its high-grade rating, all $3.32 billion of bonds will become secured in the traditional sense. But in the meantime, investors have what amounts to second-dibs on the ships, and the vessels aren’t pledged to any other piece of debt.

The gambit paid off for Royal Caribbean: Investors put in enough orders for the bonds to let the firm trim the coupon it offered to pay on its three-year debt, and it’s using proceeds from the offering to repay a short-term loan and keep additional cash on hand.

The new debt did come at a price. The three-year bond priced to yield 11.7%, and its five-year bond an even steeper 12.3%. But the firm would likely pay far more to sell unsecured bonds, if it could find buyers at all. One 5.25% unsecured bond the company sold in 2012 now yields more than 20%.

The new three-year bond last traded Friday at 98 cents on the dollar, in line with where it priced, according to Trace data. The five-year last traded at 97.75 cents on the dollar, slightly above where it was sold at a discount of 97.

If the coronavirus travel halt continues longer than expected, Royal Caribbean could try to tap the capital markets again for cash, according to the people. Under terms of its debt agreements, the company can raise as much as $3 billion between convertible debt and also bonds using a similar deal structure, one of the people said.

Royal Caribbean is burning through $250 million to $275 million of cash per month but has sufficient liquidity to last at least 12 months, according to preliminary earnings released last week.

The commission, which he chaired, will propose the resolution to the Cabinet for consideration tomorrow.

When asked if the plan will proceed under the bankruptcy law, Prayut said the bankruptcy and the rehabilitation plan are not the same thing and the Cabinet will reveal more details later.

PTT needs to raise funds for debt refinancing, increasing liquidity and raising working capital, she said

Debentures worth Bt 27 billion will reach maturity over the next two years — Bt1 billion this month, Bt1 billion more in July, Bt22 billion in September and about Bt15 billion more next year, she said.

Due to the Covid-19 fallout, some of PTT’s debtors, like airlines and those in the gas industry, have delayed their debt payments, she said. However, the delay in payments by clients has not adversely affected PTT’s cash flow, she reassured.

The company currently holds Bt50 billion cash despite its reported net loss of Bt1.6 billion in the first quarter. The losses stem from oil stock loss (cost of oil stockpile) , foreign currency borrowings and weakening of the baht.

PTT Group has losses from oil stock if Bt70 billion from business operations in the first quarter worth Bt17 billion.

The company is optimistic about the outlook for the rest of the year; refinery margins are likely to rise with crude oil price estimated at between $30 to $40 per barrel. The group’s chemical products, however, are under pressure as new suppliers from China have entered the market.

The deal to acquire a 1.3% stake values Jio Platforms at an enterprise value of 5.16 trillion rupees ($68 billion), the company said. The transaction takes the total investment raised by Jio to 671.9 billion rupees after it sold stakes to Facebook, Silver Lake and Vista Equity Partners.

Investors are betting on Jio’s access to India’s huge consumer market, and its potential to shake up traditional industries in the country — from retail to education and payments — with its technology. India is the only major open Internet market where foreign technology giants such as Amazon.com Inc., Walmart Inc. and Google’s parent Alphabet Inc. can compete for market share.

“General Atlantic’s endorsement and partnership energizes Jio’s young team to set, and achieve, even more ambitious goals,” said Akash Ambani, director of Reliance Jio, and Chairman Mukesh Ambani’s son. “Jio is committed to make a digitally inclusive India that will provide immense opportunities to every Indian citizen especially to our highly talented youth.”

Jio Platforms, a wholly owned unit of Reliance Industries, brings together Jio’s digital apps, ecosystems and the wireless platform offered by telecommunications carrier, Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., under one umbrella, according to the Mumbai-based company.

Saudi Arabia’s $320 billion sovereign wealth fund is also considering purchasing a minority stake in Jio, Bloomberg News reported on May 9.