DeVilbiss Healthcare

Introduction

DeVilbiss is a leading manufacturer of respiratory equipment with operations in the U.S., Europe, Canada, Australia and Hong Kong and sales in more than 100 countries. Among other things, the company’s devices are used for sleep therapy, inhaled medication and dispensing oxygen. Although it maintains significant U.S. operations, including its 152,000-square-foot Pennsylvania headquarters for production, distribution and warehousing, more than half of the company’s assets are located outside the United States. It’s worldwide growth plan includes significant growth in Europe.

Challenge

DeVilbiss needed financing to move its manufacturing operations from China back to the United States. Although the company approached both U.S. and global lenders, all of those lenders deemed the company’s European operations too decentralized to use as collateral for financing. Based on the recommendation of one of those lenders, the company then approached FGI to find a way to leverage those international assets and obtain the necessary financing.

Solution

FGI structured a unique solution that created a single credit facility and allowed DeVilbiss to share the borrowing capacity of operations from three separate jurisdictions—the U.K., France and Germany. The deal involved three separate agreements – one for each country – and gave the company access to roughly $5 million in unattached overseas receivables.

This type of structure was a challenge to develop and is often outside the expertise of most lenders because each of the countries involved had its own legal requirements. All three facilities had to be documented individually with each entity providing cross-guaranties to tie them all together.

Results

FGI’s agility and creative financing solutions let DeVilbiss extract fresh capital from overlooked assets. The financing FGI provided was used to keep a vital strategic transition on schedule, pay-off a bridge loan and to enhance the company’s overall working capital.