Windstream Holdings cuts half of its debt, may refinance further debt

By Devika Patel

Knoxville, Tenn., Sept. 15 – Windstream Holdings, Inc. reported that it has paid down about half of its debt in the last year and also sees opportunities for refinancing going forward.

“We’ve paid down about half of our debt in the last year alone through the CSNL debt-for-equity exchange and also open-market repurchases of discounted traded bonds, with our low-cost revolver,” chief financial officer Robert E. Gunderman said at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Media, Communications and Entertainment Conference in Los Angeles on Thursday. CSNL refers to Communications Sales & Leasing, Inc. Windstream agreed with creditors to retire debt in exchange for Communications Sales shares that Windstream held as an ownership position.

“The combination of both of those steps just this year have allowed us to reduce debt by about $750 million or about a half a turn improvement in leverage.

“That’s been very helpful for us.

“I don’t think we have that level of opportunity, I wish we did, in the near term. I think there’s going to be opportunities going forward for us to continue to be selective in terms of refinancing.

“We just called for redemption our last remaining portion of the 2017 maturity. We are also in the market today for a repricing of a $600 million term loan with a potential to upsize that and reprice that,” Gunderman said.

Loan

Windstream Services LLC said on Monday it has launched a roughly $699 million term loan B-6 with price talk of Libor plus 425 basis points with a 0.75% Libor floor and an original issue discount of 99.75. The loan has 101 soft call protection for six months and is being sold by lead bank J.P. Morgan Securities LLC.

Proceeds will be used to refinance an existing term loan B-6, to pay down 7 7/8% notes due 2017 and for other general corporate purposes.

Notes

Windstream Holdings’ direct wholly owned subsidiary, Windstream Services, said on Sept. 7 that it was redeeming all $369,469,000 of its outstanding 7 7/8%% senior notes due 2017 on Sept. 30 at par plus a make-whole premium plus accrued interest to the redemption date.

Windstream is a Little Rock, Ark.-based provider of communications and technology solutions.

© 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.