Europcar plans bridge financing, equity raise for Goldcar acquisition

By Devika Patel

Knoxville, Tenn., June 19 – Europcar Groupe SA said it has signed an agreement to acquire Goldcar.

The company is watching its balance sheet and plans to raise 10% of its capital in equity to finance the deal along with a bridge financing, which “will be transformed into full financing,” the company’s top executive stated.

“We recently pledged to actively manage our balance sheet to maintain an efficient and regular capital structure,” chief executive officer Caroline Parot said on the company’s conference call announcing the acquisition on Monday.

“In that regard, we plan to raise equity in an amount representing up to 10% of our capital.

“Post-Goldcar acquisition and equity raise, we expect to reach a corporate net debt to EBITDA ratio comfortably below 3x by year-end 2017,” Parot said.

The company plans to take on a bridge financing to fund the acquisition.

“We are not going to disclose [the cost of the bridge financing] because the bridge [terms] are quite complex and in addition to that, we do intend ... not to use all of them ... but we have a bridge just in case.

“We will communicate in due course on the bridge cost and the way the bridge will be transformed into full financing,” she said.

The acquisition of the European low cost car rental company is expected to close in the second half of the year.

Europcar Group is the Saint Quentin en Yvelines, France-based car rental arm of Volkswagen.

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