Telecoms giant Safaricom Ltd. (www.safaricom.co.ke), a mobile phone company that is the biggest listing by market capitalization on the Nairobi Stock Exchange (www.nse.co.ke), is selling KSh 4.49 billion shillings ($56 million) of 5-year bonds from 1 Dec, according a report on Bloomberg newsagency.
The agency reports an email statement that the fixed-income securities will pay a coupon of 7.75% a year, the Nairobi-based company said in an e-mailed statement today. “Interest will be paid semi-annually in arrears beginning May 2, 2011.
The bonds will start trading on the NSE on 17 Jan.
Safaricom Public Relations Officer Wachira Kang’aru told Bloomberg the floating-rate coupon is the prevailing 182-day treasury-bill rate plus 185 basis points. Bloomberg reports the Central Bank of Kenya as saying on 25 Nov that the weighted average rate of accepted bids for the T-bills was 2.464% at the most recent auction, while the cut-off rate was 2.8%.
On 7 Oct 2009, Safaricom announced a KSh 5 billion (US$67 mln) bond, also pegged to Central Bank of Kenya rates. It said it was the first tranche of a KSh 12 bln programme approved by the Capital Markets Authority (CMA). The offer was aimed at institutional clients, and closed on 29 Oct 2009.