Gazprom stood out on the American stock exchange by selling its bonds.
Apparently, in accordance with the country's active de-dollarization policy, Russian Gazprom placed the bonds in dollars on the US exchange for impressive $1.25 billion. The gas giant has not done anything like this for more than two years, but this spring it surprised everyone. It seems as if Gazprom is in a great need of money. Yet, the securities of the company were sold out like hot cakes.
Gazprom managed to stand out by selling bonds only by 10 basis points below the fair return, which was unusual because none of the issuers were able to do it in the last year in the USA. Most of the bonds were bought by American investors – almost 50%. 20% was purchased by Europeans, 10% by Russians and Swiss. The rest went to the UK — 6%.
Sales turned out to be so successful that, according to the official data, demand exceeded supply by more than three times. Buyers did not even pay attention to the total debt of Gazprom, which was 3,512 trillion rubles at the end of September last year. The net debt was 2,204 trillion rubles. Concurrently, 80 percent of the debt is denominated in foreign currency, because the company stopped taking loans in dollars only in March 2017. Meanwhile, Gazprom really needs money. In April the bonds for 2.25 billion are expected to be paid off, as well as the credit notes for 500 million Swiss francs in October.
Naturally, the money derived from the sale of bonds will not be enough to pay the debt in full, but as they say it allows to "get over with at least something" and reassure the creditors. By the way, the creditors are mostly Americans. So, they just sold the bonds and gave the money back. What a business!
