N&W Global Vending, a global leader in the production of automatic snack and beverage vending machines, is now on sale, Mergermarket newswire wrote in the last few days. Shareholders funds Equistone (former Barclays Private Equity) and Investcorp have actually given mandate to Goldman Sachs and NCTM law firm in order to organize an auction which might start at the beginning of April.
The vendor due diligence should be assigned to Bain & Company, who advised Equistone and Barclays Pe in 2008 when the two funds bought N&W from Argan Capital and Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity‘s portfolio. Back then N&W had been valued more than 800 million euros or 8.5x fiscal year 2007-2008 ebitda, that was 96 million euros (or 24% of the company’s revenues of 395 millions). The deal had been financed by senior and mezzanine debt.
In 2009 however revenues and margins dropped due to the international financial crisis: the company reached just 290 million euros in revenues versus 410 millions in the budget and 55 millions in ebitda versus 90 millions which where expected. So N&W started talks with lending banks in order to renegotiate debt conditions. In January 2010 a deal was cloased with senior lenders (Bank of Ireland, Barclays Bank, BnpParibas, Calyon, Ing, Intesasanpaolo, Natixis and Société Générale): coventants were renegotiated on about 410 million euros of senior debt while Equistone and Investorp invested 10 millions each as new mezzanine finance. Moreover mezzanine lenders Icg and SIngapore’s GIC invested 5 millions more in mezzanine finance that topped the 130 million euros of mezzanine debt which was held by N&W’s parent company.
The company now is said to be valued about 600 million euros.
