Bharti Airtel’s arm to mop-up Euro 750 million via Reg S bonds

Bharti Airtel Ltd. | Telecommunication - Service Provider | Telecom | BSE: 532454 | NSE: BHARTIARTL

04 Dec 2013 Evaluate

Bharti Airtel’s wholly owned subsidiary -- Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands) BV -- is planning to raise Euro 750 million by way of 5 -year Reg S bonds. The final pricing of the issue has been set at 5-year mid swap plus 300 basis points. The company will use the entire fund raised by the issue to refinance its existing debt.

The joint bookrunners to the issue are Standard Chartered, Barclays, BNP, Deutsch Bank, JPMorgan, and UBS. The company received “Baa3” rating for the bonds issue from Moody’s Investors Services, while Fitch Ratings assigned a “BBB-” to the same.

In March this year, Bharti had raised $1.5 billion by issuing foreign currency notes in two trenches. In the first round, it had raised $1 billion by issuing Reg S bonds with a coupon rate of 5.125% maturing in 2023. And in the second round within a month, it had raised $500 million primarily to pay off high interest loans and fund capital expenditure requirements.

Bharti Airtel is a leading integrated telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. The company ranks amongst the top 5 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers.