NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Becton Dickinson announced today it intends to offer senior unsecured notes to fund a portion of its $12.2 billion acquisition of medical device firm CareFusion.
The interest rate, maturity dates, and other key terms of the offering are to be determined at the time of pricing, said BD.
Moody's Investors Service assigned a provisional Baa2 rating to the proposed offering and affirmed BD's Prime-2 short-term rating. BD's existing A3 senior unsecured ratings remain under review for downgrade and Moody's said it anticipates that all of the firm's unsecured ratings will be downgraded to Baa2, with a stable outlook, when the transaction closes.
To fund the acquisition, BD will additionally use a $1 billion 364-day term loan and commercial paper borrowings. In a statement, Moody's said that this will weaken the firm's liquidity profile, but it should still be sufficient.
The ratings agency noted that though BD has generated a significant portion of its profit outside the US, it plans to bring back more overseas cash in a tax-efficient manner to help repay debt.
BD anticipates the acquisition of CareFusion will close in the first half of 2015.
Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Securities are acting as joint book-running managers on the senior notes offering.