Lyceum's Eat in £40m refinancing

Greg Gille
13 May 2014

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Eat, a UK-based fast-food chain owned by Lyceum Capital, has secured a ТЃ40m unitranche facility from Ardian.

The unitranche loan will be used to refinance Eat's existing credit facilities, but also includes a £12.5m capital expenditure tranche to fund further store openings in the future.

Lyceum acquired a majority stake in the UK takeaway food chain from Penta Capital in 2011. Although the deal value was not disclosed at the time, it was confirmed to be less than £100m. Lyceum secured its stake via the Lyceum Capital Partners Fund II, a £255m vehicle raised in 2008. The company's founders and management retained a substantial stake in the business following the transaction.

HSBC arranged debt facilities to finance the 2011 acquisition. Leverage represented less than 50% of the deal value, according to unquote" data.

The refinancing adds to the long list of unitranche facilities provided by Ardian in the past couple of years, though this has been predominantly in the French market. The GP arranged a €70m unitranche facility to finance Equistone's buyout of Européenne des Desserts from Azulis Capital and Céréa Partenaire in November last year. It also arranged a €220m unitranche facility for the secondary buyout of industrial supplies distribution company IPH by PAI partners in March 2013, and deployed €275m to finance the €450m buyout of Flexitallic by Bridgepoint last October.

Company
Founded in 1996, Eat offers a range of soups, sandwiches, salads and hot drinks prepared on the premises every day. The company operates 113 branches in the UK, 93 of which are based in London. At the time of Lyceum's acquisition in 2011, the business generated revenues of £85m.

People
Andrew Aylwin worked on the deal for Lyceum. Olivier Berment represented Ardian.