NEW DELHI: Adani Ports & SEZ Ltd raised $650 million via its debut dollar bond which received overwhelming response from overseas investors, with demand for the paper touching over a billion dollars.
Bankers said the proceeds of the bonds will be used to retire the company’s debt worth Rs 15,000 crore and fund new projects and acquisitions.
“This is the first investment grade infrastructure US dollar bond which received bids from over 100 investors across the world,” said Sanjeev Jha, Director and Head of India Capital Markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. “This just opens up the market for other Indian infrastructure companies to follow suit,” he said.
Bankers said apart from SBI Caps, the fund raising is being managed by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Citigroup and Emirates NBD Capital as joint book runners and lead managers. The five-year bonds will yield around 195 basis points over US treasuries.
The issue was delayed due to global stock market volatility following the Greek crisis and China stock market fall early this month.
The company’s shares closed flat at Rs 322 a share on the BSE on Wednesday.
Bankers said the response to Adani Ports issue will now encourage dollar bonds issues from other Indian companies. Another group company, Adani Transmission is also planning to raise $1 billion from the overseas markets after the good response generated by Adani Ports issue.
Adani Ports plans to set up ports in every state in India and has recently received Kerala government’s nod to set up a Rs 4,500-crore port Vizhihjam. It is also in talks to takeover Gangavaram port in Andhra Pradesh and Katttupalli port in Tamil Nadu. Last year, Adani took over L&T and Tata’s stake in Dhamra port for Rs 5,500 crore — giving it a base in the East India coast.
Of the Adani group companies, Adani Ports is doing well as it handled more than 110 MMT of cargo in the fiscal 2015 in spite of a bearish economic climate and slowdown experienced by various industrial sectors. The company’s total income was Rs 6,837 crore for the fiscal 2015 and it reported net profit of Rs 2,314 crore.
The dollar bond market had been a favourite of Indian corporates in 2014 due to its lower cost as compared to local bank loans and longer tenures. CFOs say any company which has a foreign currency as earnings can use this as natural hedge against currency volatility.
But in the calendar 2015, very few companies have tapped the dollar bond market. Reliance Industries raised $750 millon in June to finance its petrochemicals expansion and wireless telephony market. It had earlier raised $750 million in January this year. Bharti Airtel had also raised $1 billion in June first week to refinance its earlier loans.
