Avis Amends Existing Credit Facility and Completes Offering of Senior Notes

Avis Budget Group Inc. announced March 10 that it completed an amendment of its existing senior secured credit facility, as well as its recently announced offering of $450 million aggregate principal amount of senior notes due 2018.

In response, Standard and Poor’s raised its rating on Avis senior unsecured notes to "B" from "B minus" on Tuesday. The ratings services agency said it changed the ratings on the rental car company's senior unsecured notes due to recent financing activity that reduced its secured borrowing.

Avis credit facility amendment and senior notes offering:

• extend the maturity of nearly $1.0 billion of revolving credit commitments (under which no borrowings are currently outstanding) by two years, to 2013

• revise the financial and non-financial covenants in the credit facility to provide significantly greater flexibility to the company

• result in the repayment of approximately $450 million of outstanding term loan borrowings

• extend the maturity of approximately $275 million of remaining term loan borrowings by two years, to 2014

"We are extremely pleased to have executed against our plan to refinance and extend future corporate debt maturities well in advance of their stated maturity dates," said David B. Wyshner, Avis Budget Group executive vice president and chief financial officer. "The transactions that we completed demonstrate our strong access to the capital markets and the confidence of our bank lending group in our prospects. Our corporate debt maturities over the next three years now total only $50 million, and we feel very good about our current capitalization and liquidity position."

The senior notes are unsecured obligations of the company's Avis Budget Car Rental LLC subsidiary and are guaranteed on a senior basis by Avis Budget Group Inc. and certain of its domestic subsidiaries. Net proceeds from the offering were used primarily to repay outstanding term loan borrowings which, including the effect of interest rate hedges, carried an effective interest rate of approximately 9.2 percent.