Page 17 - bne Magazine February 2023

bne February 2023 Companies & Markets I 17
advance the issues maturing in August ($1.28bn) and January 2024 ($0.88bn).
The US dollar issues were heavily oversubscribed, with investors placing orders adding up to $11bn with a particular interest in the 30-year maturity, according to Ziarul Financiar daily.
Romania plans to issue €11bn-12bn worth of FX bonds this year in an attempt to ease the pressure on the local market. Stefan Nanu, State Treasury head, told Bloomberg that the financing should not put pressure on local investors and that Romania will continue to rely on foreign borrowing for a large part of the funds it needs. On the day the FX bonds were launched, January 5, the yield on 10-year bonds denominated in local currency fell by 15bp to 8.23%.
Bulgaria to sell 10-year Eurobond
Bulgaria’s finance ministry plans to sell a new 10-year bond, seeking to raise €3bn on international markets, MP Vladislav Panev revealed on January 17.
“You have not yet heard the news of the day but surprisingly the Ministry of Finance has issued a new 10-year bond. Without a roadshow, without preliminary information,” Panev wrote on Facebook.
According to Panev, the proposed coupon is 5.23% per year.
“So far, the orders [placed] are for €3bn, let’s see how many will be approved,” he said.
According to GlobalCapital, the joint book runners of the issue are BNP Paribas, Citi, JP Morgan and UniCredit. It quoted a syndicate banker as saying that the deal was going “very well”.
Albania eyes international issue
Albania is also planning an issue on international markets, and Monitor.al reported at the end of 2022 that the finance ministry in Tirana has already picked law firm Dechert LLP for the transaction.
Finance Minister Delina Ibrahimaj said in November that Albania plans to raise at least €500mn through a Eurobond issue in 2023. She said at the time that preparations for the Eurobond issue had already started, but it would only go ahead if market conditions proved favourable.
The bond issue has been included in the 2023 budget, but Ibrahimaj stressed that the government has other options if it decides not to proceed with the issue.
Albania issued its fifth Eurobond in November 2021, to support its budgets for 2021 and 2022. The €650mn 10-year sovereign Eurobond was issued with a coupon of 3.50%, down from 3.625% on the previous Eurobond”.
Uzbekistan fights gloom as stock market fails to spark
bne IntelliNews
Long-awaited developments expected to benefit Uzbekistan’s stock market did not come to pass in 2022, Kursiv has reported.
One example, it said, was the much-anticipated initial public offering (IPO) of sole major Uzbek automaker UzAuto Motors. It was postponed to a date a month from now after the company failed to obtain a sufficient number of share subscription applications by a deadline of December 28.
The UzAuto IPO was to pave the way to a massive privatisation campaign, according to government plans. A government decree in August named more than two dozen companies that were to list on the stock exchange. Steel producer Uzmetkombinat, an Uzbek blue chip, was in a queue of some of the country’s largest state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that were ready to place shares after UzAuto.
To make the shares of UzAuto more attractive to investors,
the automaker even arranged compliance with international halal requirements. Initial plans envisioned the placement of up to 5% of the company’s shares to raise up to $90mn. But after the underwriter's assessment of demand, it became clear that the market would be able to absorb only up to 1%. At the announced prices, the IPO volume would have only amounted to $17.3mn to $19.5mn.
The plan was to close the subscription application book for UzAuto shares on December 22, with the IPO supposed to take place on December 23. But these plans did not come to fruition – and the deadline for accepting share applications was postponed firstly to December 28, and then to February 15.
Behruzbek Ochilov, investment banking manager at underwriter Freedom Broker, told Kursiv: "The IPO fell at the end of 2022. It was just the time when the international investment banks and funds were going for a long weekend. And it turned out to be impossible to cover the entire
www.bne.eu