A Japanese power company sold its first floating-rate bonds, seeking to attract investors concerned about rising rates with the rare deal as Bank of Japan uncertainty mounts.
Kyushu Electric Power Co. priced the ¥15 billion ($101 million) of five-year notes at 0.3% above six-month yen TIBOR, instead of benchmarking the deal to fixed-rate government bonds. Mizuho Securities Co. and Nomura Securities Co. are the lead managers.
“We want to broaden investors’ base and diversify fundraising methods by offering a different type of product,” Junji Miyoshi, head of the funding group at the electricity provider, said in an interview. “The market has become unstable since the end of last year on the BOJ’s review of yield curve control.”
Jitters about when BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda may move away from ultra-easy policy have led to some Japanese issuers canceling bond deals this year, even as borrowers piled into the market to take advantage of some of the world’s lowest rates while they still can.
Kyushu Electric, which is based in the southernmost of Japan’s four main islands, halted fixed-rate bond deals at least twice recently, according to Miyoshi. It increased the deal size from ¥10 billion originally planned with the floating-rate structure, he said.
Floating-rate bonds mean that investors get higher coupon rates if the underlying benchmark increases, helping to protect against rising rates. Of course it means that the borrower will have to pay more, and in recent years such deals have been scarce in the public markets in Japan.
“This is the first time we have done this, and we will take the risk of interest-rate rises in order to have a wide range of financing options,” said the financing group chief. He added the firm will examine investor needs and interest-rate perspectives to decide what to do next regarding bond sales.
