Kernel Holding S.A. (Luxembourg), the holding company of agro industrial group Kernel, was planning to allocate Eurobonds for $300-350M reportedly from the bank community, as per Interfax.
The company intended to hold on 01 October a teleconference with investors, and on 02 October – meetings in London and New York, the meetings to be provided by JP Morgan and ING.
According to the source, the company planned to place either Eurobonds with 5-years maturity and 3-years call option, or the same of 7 and 4 years accordingly.
At the same time, Warsaw Stock Exchange reported on its web site referring to Kernel’s founder Andrii Verevsky’s teleconference with analysts, that the company plans to assign $58M for the export terminal construction in Chornomorsk sea port in FY 2020 (Finance Year i.e. July 2019 – June 2020). Besides that, the company is going to dispatch $90M for cogeneration plants, $66M to continue building an oilseed processing plant in West Ukraine, $10M for investing in silos, and $9M to purchase railcars, with the investments in technical maintenance amounting to $68M. According to Mr Verevsky, the company’s total investments in FY 2020 are going to comprise $300M against $251M in FY 2019.
Later on Interfax informed that Kernel allocated Eurobonds for $300 with the coupon rate of 6.5% and maturity till 2024.
As per a well-informed source, the pricing was set at 6.625% level while the papers sold by 99.475% of the par value.
The company abstained from commenting upon the above information stating it is going to promulgate the same on 17 October.
Prior to the above, the international agency Fitch Ratings upgraded the Kernel’s Long-Term Issuer Default Rating (IDR) from B+ to BB- and the forecast as stable, as advised by Interfax, further quoting Fitch that “IDR upgrading reflects our expectations towards the high and growing export profit share (2019 FY: 95% EBITDA) combined with improvement of macro-economic stability in Ukraine resulting in lowered pressure in Kernel’s credit profile by the Ukrainian operational environment”.
Kernel is the world’s largest manufacturer and exporter of sunflower seed oil, a major producer and supplier of agriproducts from the Black Sea region to global markets. Its business is based upon sunflower oil production, horticulture, grain exports, grain elevator storage and transhipment services, and the same concerning sea terminals. The company’s land bank embraces 550,000 hectares. Kernel owns the grain terminal TransBulkTerminal in the port of Chornomorsk capable of 4M t annually. The export delivery addresses include ovas er 60 countries.
https://ports.com.ua/news/kernel-razmestil-evrobondy-na-300-mln-smi
https://ports.com.ua/news/kernel-napravit-na-stroitelstvo-terminala-v-portu-chernomorsk-58-mln
https://ports.com.ua/news/fitch-povysilo-reyting-kernela