Telstra announces successful €750 million benchmark bond issue

10 November 2011 - Telstra today announced the completion overnight of a 10.5 year benchmark €750 million Eurobond issue, with a 3.75 per cent annual coupon and a maturity of 16 May 2022.

Telstra Chief Financial Officer Mr John Stanhope said the borrowing, conducted under Telstra’s Global Debt Program, confirmed the strength of Telstra’s credit story and reflected the positive progress being made to complete the National Broadband Network (NBN) transaction.

The transaction also demonstrated the depth of Telstra’s investor base in Europe, which allowed the company to quickly access the market at a time of significant uncertainty and achieve efficient pricing for a long term borrowing.

“This bond issue is Telstra’s second major long term borrowing this year and follows a successful $US 1 billion issue earlier in April. The issue was closed within two hours of launch. The strong demand reflects the high levels of appetite at present in the bond markets for corporate paper which offers risk diversification and relative stability. “The order book for the bond closed early with the issue being more than 5 times oversubscribed. Demand came from a wide range of over 250 high quality fixed income investors, including fund managers, insurance companies and banks.

“The bond priced at the tight end of market guidance at a margin of Euro mid-swaps + 145 bps following a 3 day roadshow and results from the excellent work by the joint lead managers,” Mr Stanhope said.

Proceeds will be fully swapped into A$ at drawdown through to maturity and provide Telstra with around A$1 billion of cost effective long-term funding. The bond will help lengthen the average maturity of Telstra's debt portfolio.

Issue proceeds will be mainly used for refinancing maturing debt and general working capital purposes.

The bond issue was jointly led by BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank and HSBC with CBA as CoLead manager Telstra has a long-term rating of A (negative outlook) by S&P, A2 (review for possible downgrade) by Moody’s and A (negative outlook) by Fitch.