Just in time to wrap up a busy July, the UK’s largest pub company Stonegate decided to come to market to refinance its entire debt stack with a £2.1bn equivalent bond transaction.

£156m of second lien facility provided by Barclays, £250m of sponsor TDR Capital’s equity commitments and £532m of Stonegate’s own liquidity also helped the refinancing operation.

The deal was split between £1.682bn of 2029 of sterling denominated SSNs at 10.75% coupon — the biggest sterling bond since Asda — and €470m of 2029 FRNs.

But we can’t really say the sterling tranche was a syndicated deal: just £330m of it was at the market’s disposal and went straight to a few lenders via private placement.

The euro side, of which €403.7m was the marketed amount, closed at an a eye-catching spread of E+662.5bps, and on top of that had an unusual two-year non-call period as further encouragement.

The TDR Capital-backed company signed a backstop agreement with existing lenders prior the transaction, allowing the refinancing to do down smoothly.

Stonegate's performance has been weak in recent years, as the Covid-19 pandemic and the energy crisis following Russia's invasion of Ukraine squeezed the company’s finances.

Negative cash flow and high leverage ratios were the main problems for the company, and lenders told 9fin at the time of writing they were betting on Stonegate’s real estate portfolio as a route to deleveraging.

The agreement was signed with an ad-hoc group of 2025 noteholders, who together hold 54% across the senior secured tranches — existing lenders received £37m of premium sterling notes due 2029 in return.

The secondary market was one thing investors were looking at as a source of concerns, with a high yield portfolio manager expecting selling pressure as a result of profit taking.

"It's been very busy in secondary, with lots of fast money trying to get in and larger guys taking profits. Not unexpected maybe, given the sterling side was pre-placed,” a trader said after the deal closed.

Read 9fin’s deal preview here and the Credit Quicktake for the full cap table. Our Legal and ESG Quicktakes are also available here and here.

High yield

Beyond the Stonegate deal, investors had the chance to put their eyes on other companies that have made the headlines recently.

UK online supermarket Ocado priced a costly £450m 2029 SUNs at 10.5% coupon and £250m of 2029 convertible notes as a discounted tender offer for the convertible bonds due 2025 and senior notes due 2026.

9fin got the scoop on this, having reported in mid-July that Goldman Sachs and BNP Paribas held investor calls.

As with Stonegate, Ocado offered a remunerative coupon on its latest refi to attract lenders after years of soft performances.

But in 2024 it has managed to change the narrative around its finances. Having done so, it pushed the refinancing deal at the last minute before the summer break as it reported all-time highs for LTM June 2024.

Revenues and EBITDA rose to £2.9bn and £108m, respectively, in H1 24 — see 9fin’s analysis here.

Spanish pharma company Grifols’ €770m 2027 SSNs lost a bit of ground in the secondary market after the group surprised investors yet again.

Grifols’s new auditor, Deloitte, found an accounting error related to Shanghai RAAS (SRAAS), in which Grifols sold a 20% stake for €1.6bn in June to tackle maturities.

The auditor found the stake was inflated by an astounding €457m from 2020 to 2023, pointing out the initial valuation should have deducted the amount that SRAAS held in Grifols Diagnostic Solutions (GDS), a US-based subsidiary of the company.

Grifols later tried to address this mistake during its Q2 2024 earnings call.

Here’s a look at what priced this week:

There are no deals in market.

Weekly high yield movers

Leveraged loans

A couple of leveraged loans priced this week but none launched, signalling the beginning of summer after a blockbuster H1.

French funeral provider OGF  priced a €716m TLB at at E+500bps, with an OID in the 97.5, to extend its impending 2025 debt deadline to 2028.

Sponsor Ontario Teachers Pension Plan (OTPP) put in €150m of fresh equity to further sweeten the deal — €100m to prepay a portion of the TLB and €50m to fatten liquidity, plus pay fees.

The deal addressed the 2L debt, as the €157m (including accrued interests) PIK, which sits outside the restricted group, was also extended two-and-a-half years to 2029, and its RCF by three years.

Industrial and Financial System (IFS) priced its €500m 2031 TLB at E+375bps from the initial guidance of E+375/400bps and the original size of €400m. OID also tightened to 99.75 from 99.5.

The company juiced up the transaction with a privately placed $300m HoldCo PIK.

The new money will part-finance buying Copperleaf Technologies, and lenders had concerns over this operation, given it had negative EBITDA and cash flow in 2023. Investors also expressed concerns on the deal’s punchy leverage and hit to free cash flow following the transaction.

The funeral provider’s finances got hit after the Covid-time boom and its 2025 TLB — now refinanced — traded in the 85 area in November 2023 after S&P downgraded the company to B-.

Investors told 9fin OGF had been burning cash lately, and Capex related to acquisitions weighed on cash flow in recent years.

But its essential service and its exposure to the market — the business accounts for around 18% of the overall French funeral market and is twice as large as its closest competitor — made investors confident in lending again to OGF.

Leveraged loans weekly movers

Forward Pipeline

Get in touch at marketing@9fin.com to request 9fin's weekly leveraged loan movers, high yield bond movers and forward pipeline.