Our Finance Team
Two of our top priorities last year continued to be debt reduction and cash generation. During 2001, our accounting and treasury departments worked together with our senior management team, bankers and advisors to successfully complete the largest financing transaction in our company’s history — a comprehensive refinancing of substantially all of our outstanding debt. The refinancing was designed principally to extend the maturities of our debt. In addition, this team played a critical role in helping to negotiate and complete the sale of our foreign assets in Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and northern Europe. The sale of those assets plus a sharp and constant focus on cash flow at all levels allowed the Company to reduce its outstanding debt by more than $250 million during fiscal 2001.
Our goal is to reduce the remaining debt from about $690 million to about $500 million by the second quarter of fiscal 2003. We plan to pay debt with cash from the sale of our remaining foreign operations, future tax benefits arising from foreign asset sales, and free cash flow (cash flow from operations less maintenance capital expenditures).
