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Case Study

Working capital in the time of Covid-19: Cimpress and the Apollo venture debt

By Benoit F. Leleux

14 pages

December 2020

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Reference: IMD-7-2208

When the COVID pandemic hit developed economies in full swing in the spring of 2020, companies scrambled to make sense of the implications for their business models. In most cases, reactions were defensive, aimed at ensuring the survival of the firm to the end of the epidemics. Cimpress, better known for its B2C brand Vistaprint, the world leader in e-printing, took a very different stand: it resorted to very creative finance to not only address the downside of the crisis (making sure it raised enough capital to weather the likely difficult quarters and renegotiating preventively loan covenants that could get breached in the worse scenarios from a position of strength) but also to possibly take advantages of emerging M&A opportunities. Competitors in less favorable financial shape would likely be put in situations of distress by the crisis: this could create extremely interesting opportunities for Cimpress. This aggressive use of refinancing during times of crisis for both risk mitigation and opportunistic gains is discussed.

Learning Objective

Creative financing.
Managing a crisis.
Pro-active covenant management.
Structuring original liquidity vehicles.
Private Investments in Public Equity.

Keywords

Finance, Strategy, Private Equity, Growth Financing, COVID-19, Pandemic, Risk Management, Working Capital, Credit, Agreement, Venture Capital, Stock Market, Stock Exchange, Financing Strategy

Settings

World/global, United States of America
Cimpress, Vistaprint Corporate Solutions, Media, Printing and Publishing
2020

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

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Teaching note

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