MTN taps bond market for R2.5-billion

South Africa’s MTN Group has raised R2.5-billion in three bonds as a way of lengthening its debt maturity profile, the mobile operator said on Friday.

In an auction held on Tuesday, MTN issued R540-million, R1.04-billion and R984-million respectively in three, five and seven-year notes.

“The auction has allowed MTN to meaningfully improve our pricing across the curve, lengthen our debt maturity profile and advanced our strategic activities of improving our ratio of non-rand to rand-denominated debt while at the same time increasing our usage of the local debt capital markets,” it said.

MTN added that the ratio of non-rand to rand-denominated debt would improve further to 33:67 after this issuance, compared to the 42:58 ratio reported in MTN’s 2022 interim results.  — (c) 2022 Reuters