Indosat, the Indonesian telecom and satellite operator, has completed a US$650m 10-year senior unsecured bond offering.
The fixed-rate note, which is non-callable in the first five years, carries a coupon of 7.375% and was priced at 99.478 to yield…
Indosat, the Indonesian telecom and satellite operator, has completed a US$650m 10-year senior unsecured bond offering.
The fixed-rate note, which is non-callable in the first five years, carries a coupon of 7.375% and was priced at 99.478 to yield 7.45%.
Joint bookrunning managers for the sale were Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and RBS. Sidley Austin provided legal advice to the company.
The company plans to use the proceeds to fully repay two dollar-denominated notes due 2010 and 2012. As of the end of March 2010, that debt had a total outstanding principal amount of US$342.8m. The remaining proceeds are expected to be used to refinance part of its other facilities, according to Fitch Ratings, which assigned a BBB – rating to the debt.
Standard & Poor’s rated it BB – while Moody’s gave a Ba1.
Indosat, controlled by Qatar Telecom, has several other facilities due to mature over the next couple of years, although it has not yet said whether it would seek to refinance all of these. The company has three Indonesian rupee-denominated bonds, one five-year rupee-denominated loan and a dollardenominated Finnish Export Credit Facility due to mature in 2010 and 2011.
According to reports, the financing was hugely oversubscribed, with an order book of approximately US$10.5bn. However, Nick Swierzy, head of investor relations at Indosat, was quoted by Asiamoney as claiming that this did not indicate the bond was mispriced and that the company was happy with the outcome.
Indosat, which owns two satellites, Palapa-C2 and Palapa-D, could not be reached for comment.
