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By Claire Ruckin
LONDON (Reuters) - Classified advertising firm Scout24 has cancelled plans to reprice its loans to keep its options open after the company's IPO was delayed on Tuesday, banking sources said on Thursday.
Scout24 launched a loan repricing in September via Goldman Sachs which would have reduced the company's borrowing costs as it pushed ahead with listing part of its business.
The loan repricing was not contingent on the listing, but was withdrawn after the floatation was put on hold to allow the company to keep flexibility over its future options.
As well as repricing, the deal would have given investors 12 months soft-call protection, which means that the loan could not be refinanced before October 2015.
This would have ruled out a range of options for the company going forward, including recapitalising the business to pay dividends to shareholders.
Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman and Scout24 were not immediately available to comment.
Hellman & Friedman and Blackstone (N:BX) bought a 70 percent stake in Scout24 from Deutsche Telekom (DE:DTEGn) for about 1.5 billion euros (1.91 billion US dollar) in February 2014. Deutsche Telekom retained a 30 percent stake.
The buyout was backed with 695 million euros of first and second lien leveraged loans, according to Thomson Reuters LPC data.
Scout24 is a cluster of internet portals which includes European car trading site AutoScout24 and real estate site ImmobilienScout24.
(Editing by Tessa Walsh)