Dallas, Texas 05/07/2014 (FINANCIALSTRENDS) – Service Corporation International (NYSE:SCI) on 28th April announced pricing for its private notes offer, which is expected to fetch the company $550 million in proceeds. In exchange, the private notes would attract an interest component of 5.375 percent and would be due in 2024. The notes will be attempting to target only the institutional investors and would not be made open to retail investors. The proceeds would be used by the company in tandem with its cash and revolving credit at hand to retire its unsecured notes ahead of time.
Moody’s Investors Service on the same day released an investor’s note in which it disclosed that its analysts had put a B1 rating on the notes being offered and opined that the new notes being offered would free up the company from having to make provisions for bonds maturing in the short term and also reduce its annual interest payout liability by up to $6 million. The rating agency also assigned a The Ba3 for the corporate family.
The ratings from Moody’s Investors Service come on the back of the firm reporting a big jump in revenue from its 1Q operations on 24th April to $747 million in comparison to $652 million it had reported in 1Q13. The funeral services provider also reiterated its strong outlook for the rest of 2014, with its President, Chief Executive Officer, Director Thomas L. Ryan having been quoted to have said that, “We were pleased to start off the year by reporting normalized earnings per share of $0.28, which is in line with both the prior year, as well as our internal expectations. I’m pleased to tell you that the legacy Stewart business performance made up the difference, bringing in over a 117 million of combined funeral and cemetery revenues, which were slightly ahead of our expectations”.
