Vodafone Ukraine announces another buy-out of eurobonds for $1.16 mln
The second largest Ukrainian mobile operator VF Ukraine (Vodafone Ukraine, VFU), which, in connection with the payment of dividends since the end of May, has bought back its own eurobonds for about $17.7 million following several offers, has announced another similar tender at a price of 98% of the nominal value for a total of $1.2 million.
According to a notification on the Irish Stock Exchange on Thursday, the company made another monthly dividend payment of UAH 49.315 million on December 2. This amount is equivalent to the monthly ceiling of EUR 1 million set by the National Bank.
Applications for participation in the tender are accepted until December 17, and payments are planned for the end of the year.
The bonds, which mature in February 2027, have a nominal rate of 9.625% per annum and were issued for $300 million. The redemption of the eurobonds is due to VFU’s announcement on April 24, 2025, of the payment of dividends to its shareholders in the amount of UAH 660.245 million (equivalent to $15.9 million at the specified exchange rate) for 2024. In accordance with National Bank restrictions, the dividends will be paid in separate monthly installments. Each monthly dividend is expected to amount to an equivalent amount of hryvnia, up to EUR 1 million. The company emphasized that, under the terms of the bond issue, it must offer all bondholders the opportunity to sell their bonds for an amount equal to the dividends paid outside of Ukraine.
In the first two tenders, Vodafone Ukraine redeemed bonds for the equivalent of EUR 1 million. The debut redemption was announced at 99% of the nominal value; the second was announced at 90%. The company did not announce the results of the second redemption on the exchange. The scaling factor of the first redemption was 0.0040355668.
In the third tender, the redemption price was reduced to 85% of the nominal value and the offer was limited to $4.67 million. Vodafone Ukraine received applications totaling $53.395 million and satisfied them for $5.208 million. The scaling factor was 0.1315451889487317.
The fourth tender was announced on August 13 but was extended seven times. During this time, the redemption price increased from 85% to 98%, and the redemption amount increased to $10.84 million. For this amount, the company received applications totaling $127.14 million. Some of the bonds were returned to the owners due to the inability to divide the nominal value, and the rest were accepted with a scaling factor of 0.1150681.
As a result, as of the settlement date of November 20, the company purchased bonds with a total nominal value of $10,773,230 under the tender offer. All of these bonds were canceled, and the total nominal value of the remaining bonds in circulation is now $281,759,030.
