Advantica says $89 million notes tendered in exchange offer

New York, April 10 - Advantica Restaurant Group, Inc. said $89.0 million principal amount of its 11¼% senior notes due 2008 were tendered in its exchange offer, exceeding the minimum required and allowing the transaction to go ahead.

The Spartanburg, S.C. restaurant company will issue jointly with Denny's Holdings, Inc. $71.2 million of new 12¾% senior notes due 2007 to holders who tendered the old notes.

Closing of the exchange is expected on April 15; the exchange expired at 5.00 p.m. ET on April 9.

Advantica had been offering to issue up to $212 million of the new notes for up to $265 million of the old notes. Before the exchange it had $529.6 million of the old notes outstanding, an amount that will be reduced to $440.6 million.

The company required that at least $50 million of old notes were tendered for the exchange to go ahead.

Advantica originally announced the exchange at the beginning of January and subsequently modified the terms several times and extended the deadline 13 times.

The most recent change increased the amount of new notes and reduced the threshold for the transaction to go ahead.

As modified, Advantica offered $800 principal amount of the new 12¾% notes per $1,000 principal amount of the old notes, up from $770 principal amount of new notes previously.

The minimum amount required to be tendered had originally been $160 million and was subsequently cut to $60 million before the final reduction to $50 million.

The proposal had run into opposition from bondholders who organized an unofficial committee to fight the proposal.

The bondholders' committee has previously said it has support of holders of approximately $400 million principal amount of the notes. That appeared to be sufficient to block the exchange as it previously stood since Advantica's offer was subject to at least $160 million of the $529.6 million outstanding notes being tendered.

The noteholders told the company that they are not opposed to a deleveraging transaction of some type but believe "the elimination of $60 million in principal proposed by Advantica is not appropriate or fair to bondholders."

UBS Warburg LLC was dealer manager in the exchange offer.

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.