La Banque Postale's business and local development department helps medical-social sector establishments implement their plans to maintain quality care throughout the country. The bank offers financing and pre-financing solutions tailored to the specific nature of their investments, as well as bank account and cash and cash equivalents management tools.
David Maugé, Finance Director at Enedis, goes over the details of the financial partnership created with La Banque Postale.
Our organisation, which manages 20 establishments - 19 nursing homes and an independent living facility - in the Occitania region, has owned all the real estate since 2010. So, the challenges surrounding managing real estate debt are really significant, and we must control their economic impact. Most of our real estate debt was taken out based on variable indices (in particular Livret A passbook savings accounts), and so we have directly felt the impact of changes in the market. Although the Livret A passbook savings account rate was fixed until 2019, and in light of stated outlooks concerning long-term rates, Enedis’ governance both wanted to secure and reduce the cost of this real estate debt. That was the situation we found ourselves in when we called on La Banque Postale in 2017 and 2018 to finance the long-term fixed-rate takeover of outstanding loans amounting to €15 million for six of our establishments.
First of all, La Banque Postale showed great responsiveness with regard to our call for tender, which demonstrated fantastic financial resources and a true desire to support Enedis. In addition, La Banque Postale was immediately able to propose very attractive offers, which again showed us that they wanted to be our partner. Finally, they really listened to us when it came to this restructuring plan, and that helped us work together to structure the best possible offer for Enedis.
La Banque Postale has become a leading financial partner for our group. We can rely on them to study every type of short-, medium- and long-term financing. We believe that this is only the beginning of a long-term collaboration, as our organisation’s plan is ambitious. Indeed, we want to support seniors throughout their journey, and to do this, we have settled on several strategic growth priorities:
grow internally by building new nursing homes with bed transfers and reconverting some of our historical buildings to their original purpose of sheltered housing (they are currently independent living facilities);
respond to nursing home and independent living facility calls for tender, as we recently did successfully in the PACA region;
take over “independent” establishments, whether non-profit or public, so they can benefit from the advantages of a group which is small enough to provide a human connection, but which can still offer economies of scale, structuring procedures, and over 30 years of experience in the field! Two of our 20 establishments have recently been acquired this way with some success.
And it is our high operating and economic standards, confirmed by increasingly qualitative financial aggregates, that allow us to firmly grab a hold of these growth perspectives.