Ardagh massively upsizes note offering to $4.5 billion, adds floaters, sets talk, pricing Friday

By Paul A. Harris

Portland, Ore., April 28 – Ardagh Group massively upsized its multi-tranche offering of high-yield notes to $4.5 billion equivalent from $2.85 billion equivalent late on Thursday, adding a $500 million secured tranche of floating-rate notes and setting price talk and final timing, according to a syndicate source.

The upsized deal now includes $500 million of five-year floating-rate notes which come with one year of call protection, talked with a 325 basis points spread to Libor at a price of 99 to 99.5.

Sizes and talk also surfaced on the two previously announced tranches of fixed-rate seven-year secured notes (Ba3/B+) which are callable after three years at par plus 50% of the coupons.

They include $1 billion of notes talked to yield in the 4¾% area and $500 million equivalent of euro-denominated notes talked to yield in the 4¼% area.

The dollar-denominated secured notes were originally whispered in the low 5% context, and the euro-denominated secured notes were originally whispered in the mid 4% context, sources said.

Meanwhile the combined amount of eight-year unsecured notes (B3/CCC+), callable after three years at par plus 75% of the coupons, was increased to $2.5 billion equivalent from $850 million equivalent.

Included are $1.65 billion of notes which are talked in the 7½% area and $850 million equivalent of euro-denominated notes which are talked in the 7% area.

The dollar-denominated unsecured notes were whispered in the low 8% context, while the euro-denominated notes were whispered to yield 250 bps higher than the euro-denominated secured notes.

Books for the euro-denominated notes close at 8 a.m. ET Friday and for the dollar-denominated notes at 10:30 a.m. ET Friday, with final pricing and allocations to follow

Earlier in the week timing on the Rule 144A and Regulation S for life deal was accelerated, with the originally planned roadshow – which had been set to carry into the week ahead – being cut short.

Citigroup Global Markets is the bookrunner.

Barclays, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank are the co-managers.

Proceeds will be used to help finance the acquisition of assets from Ball Corp. and Rexam plc. The acquisitions include certain metal beverage can manufacturing assets and support locations in Europe, the United States and Brazil. They will be purchased by Ardagh when Ball’s proposed acquisition of Rexam becomes complete.

The additional proceeds resulting from the $1.65 billion upsizing of the deal are expected to be used to repay Ardagh’s dollar-denominated unsecured 9 1/8% notes due 2020 in two tranches and euro-denominated 9¼% notes due 2020.

Ardagh is a Dublin-based supplier of glass and metal packaging.

© 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.