 "HDFC")
Housing Development Finance Corp Ltd, India’s largest mortgage lender, on Wednesday informed exchanges that it was opening the second tranche of its rupee denominated Masala bonds offering to raise another Rs 500 crore.
This will be the second tranche of such bond issuance. The mortgage lender company was the first Indian entity to issue Masala bond in London, raising Rs 3,000 crore on 14 July.
In its notice to the exchange, the company said the bonds will be listed on the London Stock Exchange, just like the previous bond issue. The issue opened on Wednesday and will close on Thursday.
“The pricing and the tenure of the bonds to be issued pursuant to the said issue will be intimated in due course,” HDFC said in its filing.
Going by the secondary market yield of its previous Masala bond issuance, the recent bonds could be issued at an all-in cost of around 7.80 per cent if the company chooses to issue bonds in the same tenure. HDFC had issued the first tranche at 8.33 per cent for a maturity of 37 months.
According to a source, the board has approved the company to raise up to Rs 5,000 crore through Masala bonds, out of which Rs 3,500 crore has already been utilised after the latest bond issuance.
The first bond issuance received an overwhelming response from the investors. The final order book was Rs 8,673 crore from 48 accounts, which was 2.9 times of the amount, including the greenshoe option. Of the bonds, 86 per cent was taken by Asian investors, while the remainder was claimed by European ones.
Institutional investors made up 82 per cent of allocations and private banks 18 per cent, HDFC had said in a statement.
Credit Suisse, Nomura and Axis Bank were the joint book-runners and lead managers for the issuance.
So far only three companies have tapped the Masala bonds market, raising Rs 5,500 crore. Apart from HDFC’s earlier Rs 3,000 crore, government owned NTPC Ltd raised Rs 2,000 crore and Adani Transmission raised Rs 500 crore.
