French cableco Numericable is planning a €410m two-tranche senior-secured notes offering, according to Moody’s consisting of a new €210m issue of senior-secured, floating-rate notes due 2018 and an extra €200m of fixed-rate senior-secured notes…
French cableco Numericable is planning a €410m two-tranche senior-secured notes offering, according to Moody’s consisting of a new €210m issue of senior-secured, floating-rate notes due 2018 and an extra €200m of fixed-rate senior-secured notes for an existing €360.2m issue due 2019.
While the offering has been long anticipated, recent reports that Numericable is in talks about a merger with Vivendi telecoms unit SFR sparked doubt that it would go ahead.
Moody’s assigned a ‘B2’ rating to the notes which will be issued by Numericable Finance and Co and the proceeds of which will be used to help repay existing bank debt.
Numericable issued the €360.2m of senior-secured notes in February to help repay bank debt of more than €1bn set to mature in 2014.
Explaining the rationale behind the rating, Moody’s said it reflects the agency’s view “that the notes will effectively rank pari passu with the bank debt, revolving credit facility and original 2019 notes following a default”.
In Moody’s view, the new issue will positively impact the company’s debt profile.
“Despite the higher interest cost related to these new notes, we expect Numericable to show EBITDA to interest expense coverage above 2.5x and free cash flow at around €100 million per annum going forward,” the agency said.
According to an unsourced Reuters report, Numericable has hired eight banks for the offering, namely JP Morgan, BNP Paribas, Citi, Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Morgan Stanley..
A formal launch is expected after the conclusion of an investor roadshow, which began in Paris today and is set to continue in London tomorrow.
