SGX prices maiden US$250m bond issuance at 1.234%

THE Singapore Exchange (SGX) saw strong investor interest for its maiden US$250 million bond issuance. The five-year notes carry a coupon of 1.234 per cent and will be issued at par on Sept 3, 2021.

The issuance reached an order book of US$2.3 billion from 131 accounts, according to deal statistics seen by The Business Times.

Asian investors continued to anchor the trade, with 88 per cent of the orders coming from the region, followed by 12 per cent coming from Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Half of the notes were allocated to fund managers, while 31 per cent went to banks.

The notes are semi-payable annually. They fall under the bourse operator's S$1.5 billion multicurrency debt issuance programme (MTN) established in October 2019.

Moody's Investors Service assigned Aa2 long-term local and foreign currency ratings to both the senior unsecured component of SGX's MTN programme and to the maiden drawdown.

Net proceeds from the issuance will be used to finance the investments of SGX and its subsidiaries, refinance existing debt, as well as for general corporate purposes.

SGX chief financial officer Ng Yao Loong said the bond issuance attracted "robust interest" from high-quality investors across the region.

"This follows the highly successful convertible bond issuance earlier this year and reflects investors' broad-based confidence in the resilience of our multi-asset business model and ability to navigate near-term challenges," he added.

Citigroup Global Markets Singapore, DBS and Standard Chartered Bank (Singapore) were the joint lead managers of the bond issuance.

SGX shares were trading 1.5 per cent or S$0.15 lower at S$10.06 as at 9.43am on Friday.