Yahoo Finance Hertz Sells $750 Million of Bonds to Strengthen Finances
(Bloomberg) -- Hertz Global Holdings Inc. increased the size of a junk-bond sale by a third to $1 billion, as the car-rental company works to bolster its balance sheet after a misstep on its electric vehicle fleet.
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The firm priced $750 million of first-lien secured notes maturing in 2029, upsized from $500 million previously, at par to yield 12.625%, according to a person familiar with the matter, tighter than the previous talk of the 12.75% area. The company initially floated a yield in the 13% area to investors.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is leading the deal. It declined to comment and Hertz didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Hertz received a commitment to purchase up to $500 million of the bonds, it said in a morning statement.
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The company is also selling $250 million of second-lien exchangeable notes maturing in 2029. Hertz said it received anchor orders from CK Amarillo LP — a fund set up by Certares Management and Knighthead Capital Management — and another investor to possibly purchase that entire offering.
Those notes were being offered with an 8% coupon and a conversion price between $6 and $7 a share. other people with knowledge of the matter said.
Hertz’s 4.625% bond due 2026 fell 4.75 cents on the dollar to 68.25 cents as of 3:30 p.m. Thursday in New York, according to pricing source Trace, on pace for a record closing low. S&P Global Ratings downgraded Hertz following its capital raising announcement, citing higher debt and interest expenses associated with the new bonds, while Fitch Ratings said it was considering doing the same.
Sounding Out
Bloomberg previously reported that Hertz was sounding out investors on a $500 million senior secured debt financing as well as raising $200 million in convertible bonds.
The company said it plans to use the net proceeds to pay down a portion of its $2 billion committed revolving credit facility.
Hertz also said in a regulatory filing Thursday that it’s accelerating a planned fleet refresh after announcing earlier this year that it would sell a third of its US electric vehicles. The rental company was two-thirds of the way through a planned sale of 30,000 vehicles as of May 31.
The acceleration is moving more non-cash depreciation into near-term periods. In the second quarter, Hertz expects an adjusted corporate loss before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $435 million to $495 million.
--With assistance from Maria Clara Cobo, Gowri Gurumurthy and Amy Or.
(Updates with pricing details in second paragraph. A prior version incorrectly spelled the company’s name in the first paragraph.)
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