SIT­U­A­TION

• Chi­ron was the Finan­cial Advi­sor to a com­mer­cial orchard (the ​“Com­pa­ny”) with 5,000 acres of wal­nuts, peach­es, prunes, almonds, and pis­ta­chios. The Com­pa­ny also oper­at­ed a plant that processed both Com­pa­ny-grown and third-par­ty nuts. In busi­ness for over 40 years, the Com­pa­ny had expand­ed sig­nif­i­cant­ly in recent years
• The pri­ma­ry chal­lenge was that the Com­pa­ny was sig­nif­i­cant­ly over-lev­ered, with more than $100 MM of debt across 15 lender groups includ­ing crop and real estate loans. The debt was fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by an intri­cate, inter-lock­ing col­lat­er­al structure
• Chi­ron was referred to the Com­pa­ny by one of the bank creditors

OUT­COME

• Chi­ron pro­vid­ed finan­cial advi­so­ry includ­ing 13-week cash flow fore­cast­ing, rolled for­ward for 35 weeks, allow­ing the Com­pa­ny and its accoun­tants to bud­get cash and build a bet­ter cost con­trol account­ing system
• Chiron’s work and advice enabled the Com­pa­ny to improve finan­cial fore­cast­ing, includ­ing crop yields and costing
• Using Chi­ron-gen­er­at­ed cash flows and advice, the Com­pa­ny and Chi­ron worked with the lender group to pro­pose and ulti­mate­ly exe­cute for­bear­ance agree­ments. Agree­ments were also reached to sell col­lat­er­al, reduce debt, and elim­i­nate dou­ble pledges of assets, allow­ing the Com­pa­ny to con­tin­ue operating