The End of an Era (In a Good Way!) at Quiksilver
I don’t think anybody else noticed this (or at least I didn’t see anybody else mention it) but on October 27th, Quik got a $20 million term loan from Bank of America. Along with some cash on hand, they used it to pay off the last $24.5 million (including accrued interest) of their original term loan from the Rhone Group.
The new term loan’s interest rate is 5.3%. You may remember that the interest rate on the Rhone money was 15%. The rest of the Rhone loan (it was originally a $150 million five year term loan made in August of 2009) has either been paid off or converted into equity.
Instead of paying $22.5 million a year in interest on the $150 million (some of it was non cash), they are now either paying nothing (to the extent it was converted to equity) or paying at a much lower rate.
Financially, of course, paying off $24.5 million in debt doesn’t fundamentally change anything for Quik. But it makes me feel good to see it happen, so I can only imagine how everybody at Quik must feel. I hope they had a Rhone Credit Agreement Termination Party and burned the note. And I wish I’d been invited.
Nice work!
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!