Brightspeed withdraws term loan B due to market conditions; secondary slide continues

By Sara Rosenberg

New York, Sept. 29 – In the primary market on Thursday, Brightspeed (Connect Holding II LLC) pulled its term loan B from syndication and also terminated plans for a senior secured notes offering, as a result of unfavorable conditions.

Meanwhile, the secondary market had a down day, falling roughly a quarter of a point to a half a point on increased selling.

Brightspeed shelved

Brightspeed withdrew its $2 billion seven-year term loan B from syndication due to “market conditions,” according to a news release.

Talk on the term loan B had been SOFR+10 basis points CSA plus 500 bps with a 0.5% floor, an original issue discount of 92 and 101 soft call protection for six months.

The company’s $3.6 billion of credit facilities (B2/B-) also included a $600 million revolver and a $1 billion term loan A.

Commitments were scheduled to be due at 5 p.m. ET on Thursday.

The company also pulled its offering of $1.865 billion of seven-year senior secured notes from market.

However, Brightspeed said in the news release that it “expects to commence a debt financing transaction at some point in the future.”

Brightspeed leads

BofA Securities Inc., Barclays, Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Mizuho, BNP Paribas Securities Corp., MUFG, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, BMO Capital Markets Corp., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Morgan Stanley Senior Funding Inc. and RBC Capital Markets were the joint lead arrangers on Brightspeed’s credit facilities.

The acquisition of Lumen Technologies’ incumbent local exchange carrier business in 20 states by Apollo Global Management Inc. for $7.5 billion, with the acquired business being named Brightspeed, is still expected to close in early October using an equity contribution from Apollo and proceeds from the committed financing obtained at the time of the deal announcement.

Brightspeed is a Charlotte, N.C.-based provider of broadband and telecommunications services.

Secondary softens

In other news, the secondary market in general was slightly weaker on Thursday, with one trader pointing to ETFs and mutual fund selling as the reason for the drop.

Overall, the market was down about a quarter to a half a point on the day, the trader continued.

Actively managed loan fund flows on Wednesday were negative $295 million and loan ETFs were negative $126 million, sources said.

The tracking estimate for Thursday’s weekly Lipper numbers for loans are outflows totaling $1.9 billion.

Leveraged loan funds are tracking their second largest weekly withdrawal of 2022, sources added. Outflows in mid-June were $2.03 billion.

© 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.