Italy’s leading  construction company Società italiana Condotte d’Acqua spa started roadshow for its first bond issue yesterday, MF-Milano Finanza newspaper writes today.
Headquartered in Rome, Italy, Condotte operates as an engineering, procurement and contractor company in Italy and abroad, primarily in tunneling works and high speed railway construction projects. Condotte was established in 1880 and is indirectly controlled by the Bruno Tolomei family through Ferfina spa, an intermediate holding company.
The bond will be senior unsecured and will be issued for a 300 million euros size in order to refinance 274 million euros of existing banking credit lines at better market conditions.
International rating agencies Moody’s and Standard&Poor’s assigend yesterday preliminary ratings, respectively, of  B2/B+ (see here Moody’s press release), that are rather speculative grade ratings  meaning that the bond will be  a high yield one. The deal is structured and arranged by Banca Imi, Banca Akros and Barclays.
The group registred a strong growth over the past three years with turnover growing from 765 millions in 2011 to 1,125 billions in 2014, while around a third of the construction backlog at the end of 2014 Â (5.9 billion on the whole) comes from italian clients.
Moody’s expects that Condotte’s leverage will improve in the next 12-18 months, as evidenced by a projected debt/ebitda at approximately 5.0x at the end of 2015, down from 6.3x at the end of 2014.
Following the bond issue, the company will sign a committed revolving credit facility of 50 million euros. On top of this, Condotte currently has also access to 300 million euros short term credit lines. Finally Condotte has currently 940.5 millions of performance or advance payment guarantees outstanding under uncommitted credit lines.
