2007

Fortress Files for $345 million Seacastle IPO

Fortress’ Seacastle filed an S-1 for its long-awaited IPO this week. The deal is being underwritten by Citi, Bear Stearns, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch and is set to raise up to $345 million. Proceeds are to be used for working capital and other general corporate purposes, which will include the repayment or refinancing of outstanding indebtedness and may include the financing of future acquisitions.

The recently-formed holding company is one of the world’s largest operating lessors of intermodal equipment. The company’s business is split into chassis, container, and containership segments. A chassis, for those uninitiated into the US intermodal business, is a rectangular, wheeled steel frame, generally 23.5 or 40 feet in length, built specifically for the purpose of transporting a container over the road.

Seacastle leases its equipment primarily under long-term contracts to major shipping lines and major U.S. rail and trucking companies. To give an idea of the scale of the company, as of July 31, its pro forma assets were worth $4.0 billion. The fleet lists are shown in the tables that accompany this article – all told Seacastle currently owns or manages 249,000 intermodal chassis, 976,000 dry or reefer containers, and seven containerships aggregating 32,770. As of July 31 over 83% of these assets were on long-term lease with an average remaining lease term of 3.5 years and $1.95 billion in contracted cash flow.

This is only an excerpt of The Week in Review – 09/13/2007

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