You have been approached by an investor friend for some
advice. She is considering purchasing bonds in a new company that
has recently started up and is producing a commodity. The company
is a ring-fenced entity, which means the banking consortium which
provided the debt only has a call on the plant assets, not the
balance sheet of the parent companies involved. 60% of the capital
cost of the plant was debt financed with 40% of the capital coming
from owners’ equity.
With this project financed arrangement, the bank consortium
had significant warranties provided by the company and their
contractors to warrant successful initial operation of the plant.
The plant is now running successfully, and passed its performance
warranty test run 6 months ago.
The debt arrangements between the banks and the company are
somewhat restrictive from the company’s perspective and require
that the company maintains a strict interest cover ratio. In
essence this means the company must have enough cash to pay 2 times
the monthly interest at any time. This limits the company’s ability
to pay dividends and may restrict future investments in other
plants.
The company would prefer to have more financial flexibility
and intends to raise bonds to pay off the bank debt. The current
bank interest rate is 6% and it is expected the bond rate will be
8.5%. Note: bond holders earn a higher interest rate but have less
favourable covenants, banks have a lower interest rate but impose
more restrictive covenants against the company.
The following represent the main accounting parameters of the
company in USD as of the start of production (6 months ago).
Long term Liabilities: $1.2 billion
Long term Assets: $2 billion
Equity: $0.8 billion
Accounts payable = Accounts receivable
Retained earnings/cash reserves = $100 million
Projected revenue: $800 million/yr (at current commodity
price) Feedstock costs: $250 million/yr
Expenses: $150 million/yr
Bank interest rate: 6% (no capital needs to be repaid)
Bond interest rate 8.5% (capital repaid in 30 years)
Depreciation: $133.3 million per year (fixed for 15
years)
Tax rate: 30%
Historical trends indicate the commodity involved varies in
price from the current price by up to +/- 30%, but has a normal
fluctuation range of +/- 10%.
Assume the bonds will be issues at the end of year 1. You
might want to construct a simplified P&L and Balance Sheet and
look at the Company’s economic performance assuming a plant life of
30 years.