Vivion - comment

Our analysis suggested a €50m shortfall in cash to fund the recent Amend and Extend operation. We had assumed the Dayan family would plug the gap with a bank loan, but instead, Golden repaid €200 of its shareholder loans providing €101m in cash to Vivion. There were no purchases or sales of assets in the half, and given a strong cash position at Golden we would have expected more, however, anticipation of a cash need at Vivion may have stymied further investments. Finding banks to provide the senior debt is still challenging and this will have further dampened activity. In H1, Vivion took €140m in asset write-downs in the German portfolio (7%), which aligns their asset valuation with ours. The UK portfolio is 10% above our estimate, although much of that is down to a positive €66m FX adjustment in H1. The market remains tough across Europe and after the call on September 20, we will update our analysis and model.