JG Summit raises $750M from offshore debt market

Business Mirror

A unit of the Gokongwei’s JG Summit Holdings Inc. on Thursday raised $750 million (around P30 billion) from 10-year notes, which will be used for general funding purpose of one of the country’s top conglomerates.

 The company said in a disclosure that JG Summit’s offshore unit JGSH Philippines Ltd. has priced its 10-year dollar-denominated debt at a fixed annual rate of 4.375 percent.

Bach Johann Sebastian, senior vice president for corporate planning and chief strategist at JG Summit, said the deal was upsized from the original issue size of $500 million with order book reaching $6.6 billion.

“Overall demand for Philippine corporate bonds is very strong. It was just a good time to do that transaction,” said Sebastian, adding that the deal was the country’s largest overseas corporate debt issuance.

The said issuance was the largest offered by a Philippine company in the offshore debt market. 

“The company has agreed to act as guarantor for the notes offering,” JG Summit said in its disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange.

The company earlier said that Citigroup Global Markets Ltd., Credit Suisse Securities (Europe) Ltd. and Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. Ltd acted as joint bookrunners and joint lead managers for the unrated notes.

Last week port operator International Container Terminal Services Inc. also launched a $750-million debt issuance program overseas, although it only raised $300 million in the exercise.

JG Summit—which operates airline Cebu Pacific airline, operates hotels and malls and produces snack food and beverages in some countries in Asia—posted a net income of P10.76 billion for the first three quarters of 2012, a 36-percent increase from its profit in the previous year.

The increase in net income was partly due to the P1-billion income received from Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. from the sale of the telecom arm that previously operates the Sun Cellular brand.

The company earlier said it plans to expand its core businesses in food and beverage, airline, banking, petrochemicals and property within the year.

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