Pinewood out with £300M of 6-year notes

Pinewood Group Ltd. is out with a £300 million offering of six-year (non-call two-year) secured notes, following an investor call at 11 a.m. London time today. Deutsche Bank is leading a bookrunner group as left-lead, and virtual meetings will continue through to Nov. 18 for pricing thereafter.

Proceeds from the deal are earmarked to fund expansion including the U.K. television and film infrastructure group's Shepperton Expansion Project and five new stages at Pinewood West.

Ratings are out from S&P Global Ratings and Fitch at BB/BBB (issue) and BB-BBB- (issuer), with negative and stable outlooks, respectively.

Deutsche Bank, Barclays and Credit Suisse are joint global coordinators and physical bookrunners. Goldman Sachs and NatWest Markets are joint bookrunners. The deal features a 40% equity claw and 10% special call for the first two years.

The bonds will also be pari passu with Pinewood's existing 2025 notes. These 3.25% secured notes were last increased by £200 million in September 2019 to bring the total issue size to £750 million. They closed Nov. 15 at 100.23 for a yield of 3.121%, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Pinewood is one of the leading global providers of studio space and services to the screen-based industry. Most of its activities are based at its two freehold sites close to London and these are valued at £2.158 billion, according to a note published by S&P Global Ratings today citing the most recent JLL valuation report. S&P Global Ratings also notes that the two existing studios at Pinewood are 100% let out under long-term U.K. RPI-linked contracts with Disney and Netflix signed in 2019. These two tenants account for 70% of Pinewood’s revenue, Ratings adds, noting that the firm's performance was not impacted by COVID-19.