S&P assigns Babar, loan B

S&P said it assigned preliminary ratings of B to Babar BidCo and its senior secured debt.

Antin Infrastructure Partners plans to acquire a 52.6% stake in Babar, which will become the intermediate holding company for Babilou. To support the transaction and refinance debt, Babar BidCo will issue a €487 million term-loan B and a €90 million revolving credit facility.

“We project these issuances will lead to S&P Global Ratings-adjusted debt to EBITDA of about 6.5x in 2020 and estimate adjusted debt will amount to about €700 million, including €154 million of lease liabilities and €17 million of put/call options on minority stakes. We exclude the shareholder loans from our debt metrics since we view them as nondebt like. We typically believe that the private equity-owned sponsors’ interest in deleveraging is low,” S&P said in a press release.

The outlook is stable. “The stable outlook reflects our expectation that Babilou will continue to report strong EBITDA growth in 2020 and 2021, although we note its FOCF will remain negative to neutral in both years,” the agency said.

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.