Community Investment Ventures Holdings (CIVH), the telecoms company which owns Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa (DFA), is the leading fibre provider in South Africa to both the business and consumer markets.
In December 2019, CIVH needed to refinance its core debt in order to fund its growth strategy and roll out additional fibre networks.
The RMB solution
RMB was able to consolidate the existing debt in DFA and Vumatel into one combined treasury company. The refinancing totaled an amount of R16-bn. As one of the largest transactions of this nature in the SA market to date, for an unlisted company, the debt refinancing is a truly landmark transaction.
RMB’s role in this syndicated funding package is as a result of a long-term relationship with DFA and CIVH, entrenched in May 2019, when CIVH acquired Vumatel – a transaction in which RMB acted as sole adviser and funder. In this current transaction, RMB acted as joint m andated lead arranger for the R16-billion package, which was syndicated amongst 11 Lenders and consisted of a mixture of preference share and term loan funding. RMB, being the sole funder at the CIVH holding company (HoldCo) level, also restructured the existing facility of R4.6-bn.
The client benefit
CIVH has benefitted from having the debt across the group consolidated, which has enabled it to roll out additional fibre infrastructure for South Africa – much needed at this time when the demand for Internet connectivity has increased dramatically due to the vast number of people in South Africa working and learning from home.
