CANTON, Mass. – Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc. on March 12 announced plans to refinance a portion of the company’s outstanding securitization debt with new securitization debt. The move represents the third refinancing by Dunkin’ since January 2015.

This year, the company is planning to issue $1.15 billion of new securitized notes and will use a portion to prepay and retire some of the outstanding 2015 notes, to pay transaction fees and to prefund certain obligations in connection with the 2019 notes. As of Dec. 31, about $1.7 billion of the 2015 debt remained outstanding.

The 2015 debt issuance totaled $2.6 billion, including $2.5 billion of fixed rate notes and $100 million of variable funding notes. In October 2017, Dunkin issued $1.55 billion, including $1.4 billion of fixed rate notes and a new $150 million variable funding note facility to replace the 2015 VFN. The 2017 variable funding note facility is expected to be replaced with a new $150 million VFN in the current round of financing.

As of Sept. 30, 2018, Dunkin’ Brands' long-term debt totaled $3,017,281,000, about 1 percent less debt than at the end of 2017 and compared with $1,807,556,000 at the beginning of 2015.

Dunkin’ Brands is the parent company of Dunkin’ and Baskin-Robbins. In early Nasdaq trading March 12, Dunkin’ Brands shares were $70.53, down a modest 0.33 percent.