Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) said Wednesday it raised $400 million from the issuance of US-dollar denominated bonds on strong demand from international investors.
BPI said in a disclosure to the stock exchange the bond offering was 3.3-times oversubscribed as it received over $1.3-billion offers from interested investors.
The 5-year notes were priced at US Treasury spread of T+105 basis points (bps) with a coupon of 5.25 percent, representing the tightest ever spread on a 5-year bond from a non-sovereign Philippine issuer.
BPI said the orderbooks saw a strong momentum with the final books reaching $1.3 billion.
“This allowed 35 bps of pricing compression from initial pricing guidance to final pricing, even as the issue size was increased from the original indications of $300 million, to accommodate the strong oversubscription levels,” BPI said.
It said that in terms of geographic allocation, the notes were distributed 81 percent to Asia and 19 percent to EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa ) and offshore US accounts.
The notes were distributed to high-quality fixed income accounts: 51 percent to fund managers, 29 percent to banks, 17 percent to private banks and financial institutions and 3 percent to insurance.
It marked the first time BPI tapped the international capital market since 2019.
The notes were issued under the bank’s $3-billion medium term notes program.
The bank said it would use the proceeds from the fund-raising activity for refinancing and general corporate purposes.
The transaction is expected to settle on March 26, 2024. Moody’s rates the notes Baa2.
BPI on Monday mandated domestic fund managers to conduct a global investor call and a series of meetings for possible international bond offering.
BPI Capital acted as the sole global coordinator, while J.P. Morgan, Mizuho, Standard Chartered Bank and UBS were the joint lead managers for the transaction.