- Signing of a €50 million loan facility (can be increased to €90 million) intended for external growth
- Setup of a €10 million revolving credit facility
- Introduction of ESG criteria in new financing packages
PARIS, July 19, 2023 – 6 pm – EKINOPS (Euronext Paris - FR0011466069 – EKI), leading provider of telecommunications solutions for telecom operators and enterprises, announces the signing of a new credit line with its banking partners.
With a solid financial structure (€20.5 million in net cash[1] at the end of FY 2022), Ekinops has secured a new line of credit for a total €100 million, intended to provide the company with financial resources to support its development and in particular its external growth strategy.
This new financing, secured by the banking pool comprising Caisse Régionale de Crédit Agricole Mutuel des Cotes d'Armor (Agent, Arranger, Credit Coordinator), Banque Populaire Grand Ouest (Arranger and ESG Coordinator), BNP Paribas and KBC Bank, consists of:
- An external growth credit line, intended to finance one or more M&A transactions and related costs, for an amount of €50 million (can be increased to €90 million under certain conditions) with a 7-year maturity;
- A revolving credit line, intended to finance the Group's general needs, for a maximum amount of €10 million.
These credit lines diversify Ekinops' sources of funding, extend its debt maturity, and reinforce its balance sheet in an extremely competitive market environment. The trust placed in Ekinops attests to the Group's excellent financial health, and to the support of its banking partners.
Factoring Ekinops' extra-financial performance into new financing deals
As part of its corporate social responsibility (CSR) approach, Ekinops, in agreement with its banking partners, decided to index this new financing facility to its ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) performance. Ekinops will thus benefit from a bonus of up to 5 basis points applicable to the new financing lines, depending on the number of ESG criteria achieved.
Rewarded several times by extra-financial rating agencies, Ekinops’ ESG strategy is based on three strategic areas of focus:
- Being an employer of choice: ensuring good working conditions for employees, protecting their well-being and health through specific measures to promote diversity and inclusion, and building loyalty through an attractive mobility and remuneration policy.
- Being a responsible company with respect to third parties: Ekinops has put in place responsible systems and practices.
- Limiting the environmental impact of its activities: reducing the carbon footprint of products over their entire life cycle through tangible actions.
Dmitri Pigoulevski, Ekinops’ Chief Financial Officer commented:
"This new line of financing confirms Ekinops' determination to achieve one or more acquisitions, using non-dilutive financing methods. It will provide the Group with the necessary resources to effectively seize growth opportunities. We would like to thank our banking partners for their support and their trust in our strategy."
[1] Net cash = cash and cash equivalents - borrowings (excluding bank debt relating to R&D tax credit (CIR) pre-financing and IFRS 16 lease liabilities)
About Ekinops
Ekinops is a leading provider of open, trusted and innovative network connectivity solutions to service providers around the world. Our programmable and highly scalable solutions enable the fast, flexible, and cost-effective deployment of new services for both high-speed, high-capacity optical transport as well as virtualization-enabled managed enterprise services.
Our product portfolio consists of three highly complementary product and service sets: EKINOPS360, OneAccess and Compose.
- EKINOPS360 provides optical transport solutions for metro, regional and long-distance networks with WDM for high-capacity point-to-point, ring, and optical mesh architectures, and OTN for improved bandwidth utilization and efficient multi-service aggregation.
- OneAccess offers a wide choice of physical and virtualized deployment options for access network functions.
- Compose supports service providers in making their networks software-defined with a variety of software management tools and services, including the scalable SD-WAN Xpress and SixSq Edge-to-Cloud solutions.
As service providers embrace SDN and NFV deployment models, Ekinops enables future-proofed deployment today, enabling operators to seamlessly migrate to an open, virtualized delivery model at a time of their choosing.
A global organization, Ekinops (EKI) - a public company traded on the Euronext Paris exchange operates on four continents.
Name : EKINOPS
ISIN Code : FR0011466069
Mnemonic code : EKI
Number of shares: 26,795,049