Transaction Details

Valor Education

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Creating Funding for Campus Expansion Project

Valor was founded to promote a broad, deep, and authentic vision of education—one that recognizes and nourishes our human desire for wisdom, virtue, friendship, and community, providing high quality education in its K-12 classical schools. In 2018, Valor opened its first charter school, Valor South Austin, which as of the end of the 2023-24 school year, served 814 students in grades K-12. Since then, Valor has opened four additional campuses with the following enrollment and grades served as of the end of the 2023-24 school year: Valor North Austin serving 979 students in grades K-12, Valor Kyle serving 749 students in grades K-10, Valor Leander serving 351 students in grades K-9 and Valor San Antonio serving 209 students in grades K-9.

To support its expansion efforts, Valor needed to finance the construction of phase one of the Valor Leander campus. The 25,550 square foot facility will host approximately 500 students once built. The land for the permanent site was previously acquired using proceeds from Valor’s 2023 Bonds, which were also underwritten by Baird. Additionally, proceeds of the Series 2024 Bonds were used to fund a debt service reserve fund, fund capitalized interest, and fund the cost of issuing the bonds.

Baird’s National Charter School Finance team served as sole managing underwriter on the $19,525,000 non-rated financing for Valor Education, securing a True Interest Cost (TIC) of 5.99%.

On the day of pricing, the issue was well received by investors, and Baird was able to conduct an aggressive reprice to lower yields by 15 basis points (0.15%) on the 2044 and 2054 maturities and 10 basis points for the 2034 maturity. Notably, Baird was able to achieve an aggressive seven year par call feature with no yield penalty. 17 unique investors participated in purchasing the Series 2024 Bonds, demonstrating the effectiveness of Baird’s premarketing efforts to communicate the Valor story and enrollment demand for the Leander campus.