Vodafone Ukraine announces another buy-out of eurobonds for $1.5 mln
The second largest Ukrainian mobile operator Vodafone Ukraine (VFU), which, in connection with the payment of dividends since the end of May, has bought back its own eurobonds for about $18.9 million following several offers, has announced another similar tender at a price of 98% of the nominal value for a total of $1.475 million.
As noted in a notification on the Irish Stock Exchange on Wednesday, before that, on January 2, the company made another monthly tranche of dividend payments in the amount of UAH 49.315 million, which is equivalent to the monthly ceiling of such payments of EUR 1 million set by the National Bank.
Applications for participation in the tender are accepted until January 21 inclusive, and payments are planned by January 28.
As reported, the bonds, maturing in February 2027 with a nominal coupon of 9.625% per annum, were issued for a total of $300 million. Their repurchase is linked to VFU's announcement on April 24, 2025, of dividend payments to its shareholder in the amount of UAH 660.245 million ($15.9 million at the exchange rate indicated in the notice) for 2024. Under National Bank restrictions, the dividends are to be paid in separate monthly installments. Each such monthly dividend is expected to amount, in hryvnia terms, to the equivalent of EUR 1 million. The company emphasized that under the terms of the bond issue, in such a case it is required to offer all bondholders the opportunity to submit applications to sell their bonds in an amount equal to the dividends paid outside Ukraine
In the first two tenders, Vodafone Ukraine repurchased bonds in an amount equivalent to EUR 1 million. The inaugural buyback was announced at a price of 99% of par, the second at 90% of par. The company did not disclose the results of the second buyback on the exchange, while the scaling factor for the first buyback amounted to 0.0040355668.
Following the third tender, where the buyback price was reduced to 85% of par and the offer was limited to $4.67 million, Vodafone Ukraine received applications totaling $53.395 million and satisfied them in the amount of $5.208 million. The scaling factor stood at 0.1315451889487317.
The fourth tender was announced on August 13 and was subsequently extended seven times. During this process, the buyback price was eventually increased from 85% to 98%, and the buyback amount to $10.84 million. For this amount, the company received applications totaling $127.14 million. Part of the bonds was returned to holders due to the impossibility of splitting denominations, while the remainder were accepted with a scaling factor of 0.1150681.
Finally, at the fifth bond redemption tender in December, Vodafone Ukraine received high demand at a price of 98%, which exceeded the offer of $1,164,700 by more than 50 times. The scaling factor was set at 0.01901. According to the results of the five tenders, the total nominal value of the remaining bonds in circulation is $280,614,930.
