Case study for:

Cole Engineering

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"Valitas’ professionalism, understanding of the market, and persistence got us the best value possible. I look at this as the first step in many years of collaboration to come."

Mohsen Mortada
CEO

MEET COLE ENGINEERING

Cole Engineering provides engineering consulting and advisory services to clients in the form of infrastructure planning, design, and implementation.

  • The company was consistently operating at its revolver’s limit, making it difficult to fund working capital.
  • Speed and flexibility were important as the company’s management was opportunity-rich, but capital-constrained.

EXPLOITING THE LENDING MARKET

  • Prepared marketing materials and canvassed over 100 potential lenders to maximize competitive tension.
  • Built a robust monthly credit model with a bottom-up forecast of the company’s performance to assess leverage capacity and predict covenant choke-points.
  • Maximized optionality by combining various senior and junior debt proposals (7 lenders and 18 possible combinations).
  • Found errors with the previous lender's borrowing base calculation that increased available capital by more than 10%.


TOO MUCH MONEY?

  • Before we started our lender outreach, we indicated we could secure 3.0x to 4.5x leverage (Debt to EBITDA) for Cole.
  • A proposal was sourced for 6.7x. However, we worked with a lender that proposed 4.8x to structure a facility that balanced flexibility, liquidity, and cost.
  • The following summarizes the credit facility scenarios available to Cole from the proposals received (note the costs are net of Valitas’ fees):

THE OUTCOME

Valitas arranged a financing for Cole that was higher than the top end of the range we indicated prior to contacting lenders and that exceeded its prior financing commitment by 87%.