(Bloomberg) — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. sold its first public dollar bonds in nearly four years, as part of a dual-currency deal by the Chinese internet heavyweight to repay foreign debt and buy back shares.
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The company issued $2.65 billion in notes in three installments on Tuesday, according to a person with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified discussing private details. The longest part of the offering, a 30-year bond, was priced 1.05 percentage points above comparable government bonds. The first conversations yielded a premium of approximately 1.30 percentage points.
The deal’s order book peaked above $18 billion.
Alibaba has also priced 17 billion yuan ($2.3 billion) worth of notes offshore in four tranches, a separate person said. Bloomberg News reported last week that the company’s dual-currency offering could raise about $5 billion. Alibaba sold $5 billion worth of convertible notes in a private offering in May.
A spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
The offering comes as Chinese issuers have stepped up issuance of dollar bonds after the country unveiled new stimulus measures and the Federal Reserve started cutting its key US policy rate. The number of banknotes issued by Chinese borrowers more than doubled in October from a year earlier. This also happened when spreads on Asian companies’ dollar bills recently hit all-time lows on the secondary market.
Meanwhile, Alibaba last week reported anemic growth in its core Chinese e-commerce business for the quarter ended September 30, delivering results that benefited from advances in international and cloud divisions.
(Corrects the total size of the yuan parts.)
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