VISTA Land & Lifescapes Inc., the Villar-led property developer, said on Tuesday it will raise some $350-million worth of bonds overseas through its wholly owned subsidiary VLL International Inc.
Vista Land went on a roadshow to meet with existing and potential bond investors, it said.
Vista Land said the seven-year bond has a call option starting on the fourth year with an indicative price guidance of around 6.125 percent.
Strong response from investors enabled Vista Land to further tighten the pricing of the bonds to 5.750 percent, or 37.5 basis points tighter than their guidance, despite some market volatility, the company added.
“This is the lowest coupon achieved by the company on the offshore bond markets,” it said.
The final order-book reached $1.7 billion, or almost five times oversubscribed. It is also the largest size raised by Vista Land on a primary issuance. There were 121 accounts that participated in the transaction, with 87 percent coming from Asia and 13 percent from Europe, Middle East and Africa.
In terms of investor type, 72 percent were fund managers and asset managers, 16 percent were banks and private banks and other institutional accounts accounted for the remaining 12 percent. The bonds are expected to be issued on November 28.
The proceeds from the issuance will be used primarily for refinancing, it said.
On November 10 the company announced a liability-management exercise for the tender offer of its outstanding $51.8-million 6.75-percent bonds due 2018 and $180.8-million 7.45-percent bonds due 2019.
Any bonds not tendered will be redeemed by exercising the make whole redemption option on the target bonds.
“The new bond issue, coupled with a liability-management transaction, allows Vista Land to reduce our short-term refinancing risk, extend our maturity duration and realize interest-expense savings,” Vista Land President and CEO Manuel Paolo Villar said. “It also provides us an opportunity to continue diversifying our sources of funding, ensuring we continue to build key relationships not only with our investors onshore, but also with investors from Europe and Asia.”
DBS Bank Ltd. and HSBC were joint lead managers and bookrunners for the new bonds, and are also joint dealer managers for the tender-offer exercise. China Bank Capital Corp. also acted as domestic manager for the transaction.