Iberdrola places a new perpetual green hybrid bond this Thursday, according to the agency Bloomberg. Pending the finalization of the operation, the coupon would initially be in a range between 4.625% and 4.75%. The bond has a repayment window after 5 years. The investment banks are BNP Paribas, Bank of America, Commerzbank, HSBC, JP Morgan, Natixis, Santander, SMBC and UniCredit (B&D).
Paul Vickars, senior credit analyst at Bloomberg Intelligenceestimates the size of the issue at 800 million euros, since it will probably refinance another hybrid at 3.25%. Vickars also points out that this initial coupon range (4.625%-4.75%) implies a premium of at least 40 basis points over the benchmark, and he senses that this gap could narrow, heading towards the lower end of the range.
This placement takes place just a few days after the utility carry out a green bond issue of 750 million Australian dollars – almost 460 million euros -, thus becoming the first non-financial Spanish company to carry out an issue in this market. Demand reached 2.1 billion, implying an oversubscription of 2.80 times. Thanks to strong investor interest, the weighted average cost of the operation was set below 5.65%.
This issuance comes shortly after Iberdrola’s in another overseas market at the end of October, when it made the largest sterling green bond issue in its history. In addition to the operations carried out on the Euromarket (in January, July and September), Iberdrola has become the only utility European company which will have carried out operations on the Swiss (June), British (October) and Australian (November) markets during 2024, as well as a private placement in Norwegian crowns in September.
