Basically the cash infusion enhances the company's flexibility in what's a very choppy offshore drilling market. Further, the equity issuance bolsters the company's balance sheet, which as the chart below notes is weighted down by more than $4 billion in debt. ORIG Enterprise Value data by YCharts Because the company has so much debt, it needed to sell stock at a very steep discount. Unfortunately, the company is also really diluting current shareholders, as the $200 million in new equity represents a more than 20% dilution. Now what: Ocean Rig is hoping to take advantage of the current market turmoil by using the cash to position itself to buy deeply discounted drilling rigs. If it is successful in this endeavourthen the equity raise could end up creating value. However, if it doesn't make an accretiveacquisition, this equity raise simply amounts to a major dilution for current investors.