Indian telecoms giant Bharti Airtel has reopened its euro-denominated bond offering to raise a further €250m (US$341.3m).
The company, via subsidiary Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands), initially raised €750m through the issuance of 4% 5-year…
Indian telecoms giant Bharti Airtel has reopened its euro-denominated bond offering to raise a further €250m (US$341.3m).
The company, via subsidiary Bharti Airtel International (Netherlands), initially raised €750m through the issuance of 4% 5-year senior unsecured notes in December 2013 and is now upsizing the offering to €1bn.
Barclays, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Standard Chartered and UBS are joint bookrunners on the transaction.
As with the initial issuance, proceeds from the financing will primarily be used to refinance a portion of its dollar-denominated debt, helping it to alleviate the impact of the rupee’s depreciation against the currency.
Bharti has a significant US debt exposure following its heavily financed expansion into Africa in 2010 when it snapped up most of Zain’s African operations for a total US$10.7bn. In the same year, Bharti participated in the Indian 3G and 4G spectrum auctions that raised a combined US$15.9bn for the Department of Telecommunications.
Commenting on the initial financing, Harjeet Kohli, Bharti’s group treasurer, said: “This transaction helps us continue to diversify sources of funding and the euro financing also acts as a natural hedge to many of our African businesses where local currency is pegged to euros.”
The offering was not only Bharti’s first eurobond issuance but the first by an Indian corporate or emerging market telco. Bharti stated that it was more than five times oversubscribed and generated an order book of €3.8bn (US$5.2bn).
According to ratings agency Moody’s, which assigned a Baa3 rating to the new debt, Bharti has a leverage ratio of 2.18x net debt/EBITDA and total debt of around US$9.7bn.
