...- In October 2020, Centurion Bidco SpA, owner of Italian IT services group Engineering SpA, issued senior secured notes of about 605 million, alongside a 38 million pari passu bank loan and 216 million of subordinated payment-in-kind (PIK) notes, to finance a secondary leveraged buyout of the company, raising adjusted leverage to 8.2x in 2020 from 7.3x in 2019. - As the largest local IT player, Engineering benefits from entrenched relationships with its customers, solid organic growth since 2003, and sound free cash flow generation, while also fighting off competition from global IT services players. - However, Engineering's operations are limited to Italy (86% of revenue), with moderate customer concentration, and it operates in a highly fragmented IT services market with moderate profitability. It also competes against larger, better-capitalized global IT services players. - We are assigning our 'B' long-term issuer credit rating to Engineering SpA and our 'B' issue rating to the senior...
