I thought; in an attempt to both educate myself and clarify a couple of things I would write directly to the company. The responses hold no surprises but I thought I would share them anyway. My first question was: Is the interest rate swap an agreed rate vs the current prevailing market rate? Is it across part of or the whole of the company debt? Response; "Yes, when the interest rate swap matures in February 2014, the entire drag of $1.2m per half, that is the incremental interest incurred based on the fixed swap rate over the current market rates, will end. The interest rate swap is across part of the company debt".
2nd question: I know you can't divulge the terms of the re-financing package but can you expand on the process at all?
Response; "We do not publicly disclose our borrowing margins as they are commercial-in-confidence, however we have benchmarked the rates as part of our re-financing and can confirm they are market competitive. We spoke with four lenders, then ran a process with two lenders to ultimately stay with ANZ (our current lender) so we can clearly state we have achieved an improvement in the margin".
COF Price at posting:
44.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
