The shareholders of UK communications infrastructure firm Arqiva are set to inject £400m of fresh capital to support its £3.7bn bond and loan refinancing.
In total the shareholders, the largest of which is the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board…
The shareholders of UK communications infrastructure firm Arqiva are set to inject £400m of fresh capital to support its £3.7bn bond and loan refinancing.
In total the shareholders, the largest of which is the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board with a 48% stake, will effectively provide around £780m as a result of not taking dividends since 2009.
As previously reported in November by TelecomFinance, the equity injection will help the company issue an investment grade bond in Q1 2013 to help refinance its debt mountain, which matures next year.
An Arqiva spokesman said on 7 January that the company was eyeing a £500m senior investment grade bond as part of what would likely be “the largest financing transaction in 2013”.
There will also be a further holding company bond in the first quarter of this year, with the remaining £2.5bn of debt being refinanced through credit facilities with a club of 20 banks.
It is understood that the top tier banks for this financing include RBS, Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, BofA Merrill Lynch, UBS and Commerzbank Bank.
HSBC and Rothschild are advising Arqiva on refinancing the debt.
Arqiva’s 2007 debt was arranged by Barclays, Dresdner Kleinwort (now part of Commerzbank), HSBC and RBS. The facility was secured by Arqiva’s then majority owner Macquarie, and was connected to its transformational acquisition of National Grid Wireless for £2.5bn.
It comprises a £2.15bn senior loan, split between a £1.55bn seven-year term loan A1 and a £600m 7.5 year A2 tranche; a £700m seven-year cap-ex line; £475m in junior debt and a £75m revolving credit facility. Expensive long-dated interest swaps have pushed up the amount of debt the company needs to refinance since the £3.4bn facility six years ago.
Arqiva provides television, radio, satellite and wireless communications infrastructure in the UK. It also has operations in Ireland, mainland Europe and the US.
The consortium of several shareholder investor groups that own the group also includes the Macquarie European Infrastructure Fund 2, which holds a 25% stake.
