US private equity firm Lone Star is to buy N&W Global Vending,  an Italian company headquartered i Bergamo which is a global leader in the production of automatic snack and beverage vending machines,  Il Sole 24 Ore wrote.
The company has been valued about 690 million euros or 9x the company’s ebitda of 75 million euros, after revenues of about 300 million euros. Lone Star will subscribe a 280 million euros capital increase in N&W Global Vending. The auction has been launched last April  (see here a previous post by BeBeez).
Sellers are Equistone (ex Barclays Private Equity) and Investcorp, who had bought out the group in 2008 from other two private equity funds managed by Argan Capital and Merrill Lynch Private Equity. Those two funds in turn in 2005 had bought N&W from a fund managed by Compass Partners International, which had built up the group in 1999, after buying the Italian company Necta (ex Zanussi Vending) from Electrolux-Zanussi and having merged it with the danish company Wittenborg. N&W Global Vending is then at its fourth buyout round.
The acquisition by Lone Star comes after a debt restructuring made by Equistone and Investcorp at the end of 2009 as revenues and margins had dropped that year 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 closed 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.
In 2008 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 for a total of 5.25x N&W’s FY 2007-2008 ebitda or more than 500 million euros.
Lone Star is quite active in Italy in the last few months both on the private equity side (it is running for control of Grandi Stazioni,  GE Capital Interbanca and Accedo, former Intesa Personal finance) and the non performing loans side  (Lone Star bought the independent credit servicer Caf and two Npls portfolios for a total of gross 400 million euros from Tercas and Caripe banks).
