Eurazeo's Europcar to list in Q2

Greg Gille
02 February 2015

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Europcar, the car rental business owned by listed private equity house Eurazeo, is aiming to list in the second quarter of 2015.

According to a source close to the situation, only a small percentage of the IPO would involve existing shares - meaning that Eurazeo would remain significantly invested in the business following the listing.

The French listed investor acquired Europcar from Volkswagen for €3.08bn in 2006. The purchase price was equivalent to 16.5x EBITDA at the time.

Europcar raised €324m on the high-yield market to refinance its debt in 2012, with a 11.5% coupon. The business was initally looking to raise €335m, in order to refinance the €425m debt line maturing in 2013. Europcar shareholders, including Eurazeo, injected an extra €110m into the company's balance sheet, to be later converted to equity.

In addition to the bond offering, Europcar negotiated to extend the maturity on its senior revolving credit facility. Following these transactions, the new corporate debt maturities were pushed to 2017 and 2018.

Eurazeo currently owns 87% of the business, with a total equity investment amounting to €773m.

Headquartered in Paris and founded in 1949, Europcar is a car rental firm. With around 6,500 employees, the group is present in 145 countries. Europcar posted revenues of €1.9bn in 2013, with a €157m EBITDA. The latter figure was already exceeded in the first nine months of 2014, with Europcar posting a €180m EBITDA. In the same January-September 2014 period, the group generated revenues of €1.5bn.

Net debt in the first nine months of 2014 amounted to €3.34bn, including the debt equivalent of fleet operating leases and corporate notes.

Eurazeo will be busy on the IPO front in the first half of 2015 - the manager is also in the process of listing Elis, a French provider of laundry services. The plans were announced at the end of January, along with an initial indicative share price range of €12-19. The company plans to list on the stock exchange on 11 February. Elis will list predominantly new shares totalling €700m, with a secondary offering worth €50m.

According to a source close to the situation, the Elis offering is already fully subscribed.