Proximus successfully issued €500 million of 5-year institutional bonds

Today, Proximus has successfully issued €500 million Senior Unsecured Notes due March 2022. The spread of this transaction was set at 25 basis points over the 5-year mid-swap rate. At 0.50%, this issue marks the lowest ever bond coupon for the company. The issue was very well received with an order book in excess of €1.3 billion (nearly 3 times oversubscribed) and was placed with more than 75 European institutional investors.

Proximus took advantage of a suitable market window and still near-historic lows in both interest rates and credit spreads, to issue 5 year notes with a 0.50% annual coupon. Furthermore, thanks to a pre-hedge of the underlying mid-swap rate earlier this year, Proximus managed to further reduce the all-in interest cost of this transaction to a rounded 0.35%, which will enable Proximus to lower its average cost of debt to slightly below 2%.

The proceeds of the new issue will be used primarily to refinance existing short term debt and upcoming maturities.

The success of this transaction once more testifies to the quality and strength of the Proximus credit as well as the strong appetite of investors for it in the institutional bond markets.

Proximus’ long-term senior debt is rated A1 by Moody's and A by Standard & Poor’s.

BNP Paribas, Belfius, KBC, Barclays, and NatWest Markets acted as Joint Bookrunners.