ABJA Investment Co (ABJA), a Singapore-based subsidiary of Tata Steel, on Thursday priced its dollar bonds having two different tenures to raise a total of $1.3 billion, bankers close to the deal told FE. ABJA priced its 5.5-year bonds at 4.45% to raise $300 million, while it priced 10-year bonds at 5.45% to raise $1 billion, according to sources. The initial price guidance on the 5.5-year and the 10-year bonds stood at 4.875% and 5.875%, respectively. This is the first dollar bond offering by a subsidiary of an Indian company in 2018. “It was a great deal. The paper got priced lower than where the previously issued bonds of the company were trading in the secondary market. We saw a huge demand from investors across Asia and Europe,” a banker said. Road shows for the deal commenced this week in Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and London. S&P Global Ratings said in a release that it has assigned ‘BB-’ long-term issue rating to the proposed dollar-denominated, senior unsecured, non-guaranteed notes issued by ABJA Investment Co. Pte. “At the same time, we assigned our ‘BB-’ long-term issuer rating on ABJA with a stable outlook,” the agency said.
The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Steel. “ABJA will use proceeds from the issuance to refinance Tata Steel group’s short-term debt. As a result, we don’t expect the group’s cash flow leverage profile to alter post the proposed notes issuance; however, a reduction in short-term debt is supportive of Tata Steel’s liquidity management,” S&P said.
Prior to this, the company had issued dollar bonds in 2014. At that time, the firm had raised $500 million via 5.5-year notes at a coupon rate of 4.85% and raised $1 billion via 10-year notes at a coupon rate of 5.95%, according to Bloomberg data. YES Bank and Exim Bank are likely to hit the foreign currency bond market soon. Foreign currency bond issuances from India crossed $16 billion in 2017. This was a tad lower than the record volume seen during 2014.
