With interest rates remaining low, corporations are lining up to refinance debt.
Quintiles is among them.
Bloomberg news is reporting that Quintiles could land a nearly $2 billion loan as early as today.
Phil Bridges, a spokesperson for Quintiles, confirmed to WRAL News that the company is seeking a refinance deal.
“Quintiles is exploring a simple financial transaction which would amend the company’s existing credit agreements. This transaction would reduce the interest rate on some of the company’s debt (0.5 percent to 1.0 percent depending on a number of factors),” Bridges said.
“This proposed action would not increase the company’s debt. It would simply provide Quintiles with a more favorable interest rate given our good credit rating and the current attractive conditions in lending markets.”
On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that GlaxoSmithKline (NYSE: GSK) is selling more than $2 billion in bonds. AT&T is too, according to the news service.
Citing an unnamed source “with knowledge of the matter,” Bloomberg said Quintiles is “seeking a $1.975 billion term loan to refinance debt.”
JPMorgan Chase & Co. is leading the deal and hosting a lender call for Quintiles today at 11 a.m. in New York, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the deal is private.
Quintiles is proposing to pay 3.25 percentage points more than the London interbank offered rate on the debt due in June 2018, the person said. Libor, a rate banks charge to lend to each other, will have a 1.25 percent minimum.
Lenders are offered one year of 101 soft-call protection, meaning that Durham, North Carolina-based Quintiles would have to pay one cent more than face value to reprice the debt in its first year, the person said.
Quintiles, which is privately held, is the world’s largest provider of services to the life sciences industry.
[QUINTILES ARCHIVE: Check out a decade of Quintiles stories as reported in WRAL Tech Wire.]
(Bloomberg contributed to this report.)
