Ardagh Group will refinance $1.3 billion of debt before a planned initial public offering in the coming months.
Yesterday the producer of glass and metal containers, chaired by Paul Coulson, the Irish financier, launched the sale of $1 billion (€941.13 million) of senior bonds that will mature in 2025.
Along with existing cash resources of about $300 million, the company will use the proceeds of the bond sale to repay $1.26 billion of debt due to be redeemed in 2019 in full.
In a statement Ardagh said, following these transactions, the only debt maturing before 2021 that it would have was about $265 million of secured floating rate notes due in 2019.
The refinancing transactions announced yesterday are the latest such steps taken by the company before a planned flotation later this year.
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Last October Mr Coulson said he intended to go ahead with an IPO in March or April this year. He said that the proposed timeframe was subject to market conditions.
Ardagh filed a registration statement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in November.
It is understood that the company will seek to raise between €250 million and €270 million from the IPO. The group said yesterday that it planned to continue paying down its debt through increased earnings growth and with the proceeds of the IPO.
Mr Coulson took advantage of low bond yields throughout 2016 to refinance billions of euro of debt and signalled his intent to continue doing so in 2017 to prepare the company for its IPO. Last June Ardagh completed its largest ever acquisition with a $3.4 billion takeover of Ball Corporation, a US packaging company.
Ardagh, which began as the Irish Glass Bottle Company and is now based in Luxembourg, is now one of the largest glass and metal packaging companies in the world with customers such as Coca-Cola, Heineken and Unilever. It has 109 facilities in 22 countries and employs about 23,5000 people.
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Ardagh also said yesterday that, based on unaudited information, its expected revenue dipped marginally in the final quarter of last year. The company added, however, that earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) were expected to have increased “by a mid-single digit percentage” compared with the same period in 2015.
Its 2015 annual accounts show the company made a full-year profit of €41 million on revenues of €5.2 billion. Ebitda increased by 10 per cent to €934 million in 2015.