On 26 May 2021, the Group announced a rights issue. The rights issue is intended, alongside the other actions that the Group has already announced and implemented, to reduce leverage and improve the Group’s overall liquidity position thereby providing the Group with the capital structure to both support the business during further potential disruptions from COVID-19 and to deliver on its strategy as normalised trading conditions return.
As a direct consequence of the impact of COVID-19, the Group successfully negotiated waivers on its debt covenants from its lending group for FY2021, and these have been extended up to, but not including, the August 2022 test date whether or not the rights issue is successful. Conditional on a Minimum Equity Raise being achieved, the debt covenants for 31 August 2022 were also renegotiated to increase the threshold of the Group’s Net Debt/Adjusted EBITDA covenant to not exceed 4.5x and to reduce the Interest cover covenant to be not less than 2.5x. As part of the agreement reached to waive the debt covenants, a minimum liquidity requirement and a gross debt restriction have been put in place, both in the scenario of a Minimum Equity Raise being achieved and a Minimum Equity Raise not being achieved. Please refer to Note 20 for further details.
Post year end the Group announced that the outcome of a cost reduction programme it had undertaken would deliver annualised savings of €18m against its pre COVID-19 cost base.
On 2 April 2021, the Group completed the sale of its wholly owned US subsidiary, Vermont Hard Cider Company (“VHCC”) to Northeast Kingdom Drinks Group, LLC for a total consideration of USD 20.0m. VHCC was classified as a disposal group, held for sale, as at 28 February 2021.
In April 2021, the Group's wholly owned subsidiary, Matthew Clark Bibendum Limited ("MCB"), was the subject of a cybersecurity incident, which impacted both Matthew Clark and Bibendum. MCB responded quickly, enacting its cybersecurity response plan, and taking steps to protect its IT systems. Additionally, C&C engaged a leading forensic information technology firm and legal counsel to assist the Group in investigating the incident and restoring the IT systems as quickly and as safely as possible. As part of the cybersecurity response plan, the Group contacted all stakeholders on the actions the Group had taken and notified the relevant authorities, including the Information Commissioner’s Office. This incident did not affect the IT systems of the wider C&C Group, which continued to operate as normal. The recent incident affecting Matthew Clark and Bibendum IT systems has emphasised the need for continued focus on information security. The Group has commenced a detailed review of its information security and cyber preparedness policies and processes.
There were no other events affecting the Group that have occurred since the year end which would require disclosure or amendment of the consolidated financial statements.