Irish operator Eircom has amended and extended the terms of its senior loan facilities, pushing out the dates of when the debt will be due.
Irish operator Eircom has amended and extended the terms of its senior loan facilities, pushing out the dates of when the debt will be due.
Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas advised on the refinancing, which means that Eircom’s €1.86bn facility is now due in 2022. The loans were previously extended in March 2014 by the same banks to 2019.
In addition to the loans, Eircom has €350m of senior secured notes due 2020 and another €159m in loans which mature in 2019. The company’s total gross debt is €2.37bn, a company spokesperson said. At the end of last year, Eircom’s total net debt was €2.23bn, roughly equal to 4.7x its 2014 EBITDA of €467m.
The A&E, which Linklaters and Arthur Cox provided legal advice on, was disclosed in Eircom’s full year results released on 1 September, almost a year after the operator abandoned its planned IPO.
Eircom CEO Richard Moat, who was promoted to the top job after his predecessor left following the telco’s strategic review, said it had been a “transformative year in the financial and operational performance of the group”.
In particular, Moat noted that Eircom “passed a symbolic milestone in June” after it recorded year-on-year revenue growth in a quarter for the first time in seven years, which he said was “driven by both our fixed and mobile segments”.
Eircom abandoned a possible IPO in September 2014 as it could not convince investors of its €3bn valuation of the group.
Alongside an IPO, Eircom’s advisers – Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Rothschild – were also sounding out potential buyers. Operators Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom, and private equity firms KKR, Apax Partners and CVC were all reported to have discussed potential deals, but none of these talks resulted in an offer.
The company has no immediate plans to reattempt an IPO.
In May, Anchorage Capital Group bought a 25% stake in Eircom from fellow New York private equity firm Blackstone, making Anchorage Eircom’s largest shareholder.
The development came a day after Eircom disclosed that it had recently knocked back a €3.3bn non-binding takeover proposal.
In a statement at the time to the Irish Stock Exchange, Eircom said: “While the bidder was very credible, the board believed that, with the business reaching an inflection point, the indicated price range undervalued the group.”