Oaktree Capital Management is ready to sell Italy’s men and women’s casual wear retail chain Conbipel, Reuters wrote yesterday confirming a rumor referred by Il Sole 24 Ore some days ago. Rothschild is said to be the mandated advisor who will help Oaktree to sell the company.
Oaktree had bought Conbipel (through Ocm Luxembourg Stilo Investement sarl) from the Massa family when the company was in a financial distress in 2007. After a recent debt restructuring agreement with company’s lenders, the fund is now ready to divest.
Conbipel reached 223 million euros in revenues in 2014 with 20 millions of ebitda, with the latter that might reach 27-28 million euros this year. If a deal is signed next year, Conbipel might be valued about 220 millione uros at an 8x ebitda mutilpe. However, if a 11.9x multiple is applied (as it was for Ovs casual wear retail chain which was listed on the Italian Stock Exchange at the beginning of this year, see a previous post by BeBeez), Conbipel might be valued more than 320 million euros.
Last July the company told the trade unions that 2014 results confirmed the positive trend of the last three years, that revenues had been higher than the budget, that ebitda was up thanks to lower costs and that 11 new shops had been opened (while 5 were closed).
The Court of Asti had approved a debt restructuring agreement between Conbipel and its lending banks in June 2014 (see here the Court’s Decree). The agreement provided the following:
1) a capital increase of Conbipel, through an issue of convertible financial instruments which have been subscribed by all the lending banks (Unicredit, GE Capital Interbanca and Intesa Sanpaolo) but Mps and Banco Popolare in exchange of their credits; an agreement with Mps and Banco Popolare to be paid a sum of cash for their credits;
2) rescheduling of the remaining senior debt;
3) issuing of a 10 million euros new revolving line by Unicredit and Oaktree.
