Ineos riferisce di trattative per vendere taluni asset nel settore della raffinazione ... precedenti trattative, allora con i cinesi di CNOOC erano finite in un nulla di fatto, anche perché la collocazione della raffineria di Grangemouth è strategica, ma i costi di ammodernamento dell'impianto da sostenere negli anni a venire sono notevoli e il business della raffinazione vede i propri margini particolarmente copressi nella fase attuale....
Vediamo se riesce a rimpolpare la propria dotazione di liquidità per questa via...
Ineos in Talks to Sell Assets to Cut $12 Billion Debt (Update1)
By John Glover and Sabine Pirone
Dec. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Ineos Group Holdings Plc, the world’s third-largest chemical maker, said it’s negotiating to sell refinery assets as it seeks to cut debt
Britain’s largest privately held company is considering partial and complete asset disposals, said a company spokesman, who declined to be identified or to give further details. Ineos, which owns the
Grangemouth refinery in Scotland, has $12.7 billion of debt, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The Lyndhurst, England-based company got a waiver on loan agreements in July after the global recession triggered a slump in demand for chemicals. Ineos is run by
Jim Ratcliffe, a former private equity executive, who sought to challenge rivals BASF SE and Dow Chemical Co. by borrowing to fund the purchase of low- margin commodity assets.
“They need to generate more cash and one way of doing that is to sell assets,” said
Alexandre Dray, a credit analyst at Spread Research in Lyon, France. “They need to become a smaller company with more profitable assets.”
Ineos’s banks Barclays Capital and Merrill Lynch & Co. in July 2008 pulled the syndication of 620 million euros of loans used to acquire Kerling, the polymers division of Norsk Hydro ASA, according to Standard & Poor’s LCD. A 345 million-euro portion of the loan had an 18-month maturity and a 275 million- euro part was for two years, according to LCD.
Ineos also has to refinance 160 million euros ($237 million) of 9.125 percent bonds due 2011. The company has the right to redeem the notes at face value in January and they are currently at about 90 cents on the euro, according to
Alex Moss, head of high yield at Insight Investment Management in London.
Risk Diminishes
The notes fell to as low as 7.125 cents in March, according to Bloomberg Fair Value calculations, as Ineos struggled to get banks to waive loan conditions and to prepare a new business plan.
Ineos’s 1.63 billion euros of 7.875 percent bonds due 2016 have gained to the highest level since June last year, according to HSBC Holdings Plc prices on Bloomberg. The notes, which are unchanged today at 70 cents on the euro, fell to as low as 6 cents in January.
“It wouldn’t be surprising to see more corporates raising funds through asset sales in an attempt to appease current lending covenants,” said
Jason Watts, head of credit trading at National Australia Bank Ltd. in Sydney. “Extra cash is helpful for any company’s credit profile.”
The cost of protecting Ineos bonds from default fell after the Times cited Ratcliffe as saying Ineos would sell assets to repay debt. Credit-default swaps on the company fell 0.4 percentage point to 30.6 percent upfront and 5 percent a year, according to CMA DataVision. That means it costs 3.06 million euros in advance and 500,000 euros a year to protect 10 million euros of bonds from default for five years.
Credit-default swaps pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a company fail to adhere to its debt agreements. A decrease signals improvement in perceptions of credit quality.
