Light & Wonder, the renowned American provider of gaming products and services, has announced that the corporation’s debt has been reduced dramatically following the company’s recent moves.
The American provider went through a series of debt refinancing transactions following the money it gathered from the recent sale of its lottery business. Earlier this month, Light & Wonder announced that it completed the sale of its lottery business Brookfield Business Partners, a private equity company Brookfield Business Partners, a subsidiary of Canadian financial services giant Brookfield Asset Management Incorporated.
The decision to sell the lottery business came after a strategic review of the corporation’s activity, which concluded that the company has to reduce its debt and focus on developing casino games instead of being active in lotteries and sports betting as well.
The sale of the lottery business generated 5.8 billion dollars for Light & Wonder, and 4 billion of that money was used to retire a term loan. The company also redeemed secured and unsecured notes worth 3 billion dollars, while getting a new term loan facility amounting to 2.2 billion dollars. Moreover, the American company entered into a new revolving credit facility of 750 million dollars.
The bottom line is that the corporation’s debt has been reduced from a total of 8.8 billion U.S. dollars to just 4 billion dollars, taking the company’s net debt leverage ratio from 6.2x to just below 3.9x. The final purpose is to take that ratio somewhere between 2.5x and 3.5x. Light & Wonder has also managed to reduce its annual interest payments by 225 million dollars.
