Barbados-based telco Columbus has closed a US$1.25bn senior unsecured bond that was six times oversubscribed and built an order book close to US$8bn.
Citigroup, JP Morgan and RBC Capital Markets acted as joint lead managers and joint bookrunners and…
Barbados-based telco Columbus has closed a US$1.25bn senior unsecured bond that was six times oversubscribed and built an order book close to US$8bn.
Citigroup, JP Morgan and RBC Capital Markets acted as joint lead managers and joint bookrunners and sold the notes following a seven day-road show conducted by Columbus’ management in March.
The notes priced at par and carry a coupon of 7.375%, and will mature in 2021.
The proceeds will be used to retire two series of high yield debt amounting to US$852m, to fund a US$100m dividend for Columbus’ private equity owners, and to finance the acquisition of Colombian infrastructure provider Lazus, agreed last month.
Commenting on the transaction, Columbus founder and CEO Brendan Paddick described the telco as “truly poised for future growth and continued network investment, now with a proven track record of repeated efficient access to the capital markets”.
Columbus, which is headquartered in the Bahamas, has triple-play operators across a number of Caribbean islands. It also has an enterprise unit which provides connectivity and IT solutions, managed networking and cloud-based services.
It offers capacity and IP services, corporate data solutions and data centre hosting throughout 42 countries in the greater Caribbean, Central American and Andean region. It has 42,300 km of undersea cable and 34,300 km of terrestrial fibre.