2019.07.09;二Jul9th(DDD):IBM_Gets_Tepid_Reception_$20Billion_Bond_Sale:Barrons
Published by DB,
IBM Gets a Tepid Reception for Its $20 Billion Bond Sale
By Alexandra Scaggs May 8, 2019 4:31 pm ET
Another sizable bond offering is hitting the market, the second in two days.
IBM
is selling $20 billion in bonds to finance its purchase of
Red Hat.
The reception for this debt has been a bit chillier than the first one, though.
The back story. IBM’s (ticker: IBM) bond offering just barely nudges out
Bristol-Myers Squibb
’s
(BMY) Tuesday sale to become the largest deal this year and the 10th-largest deal ever.
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6
6: The IBM Hype Machine
What’s new. Big Blue sold eight tranches of fixed- and floating-rate bonds on Wednesday, maturing in 2 to 30 years.
Demand was fairly tepid compared with other bond sales this year. The order book was about twice the size of the offering, while the average deal this year has attracted orders more than three times the size of the final sale.
The $19 billion Bristol-Myers deal—covered more than three times over—likely took some wind out of the sails of IBM’s offer. Yet investors also expressed concern about the company’s plan to reduce leverage, though IBM plans to halt buybacks in 2020 and 2021 to pay down debt.
Looking ahead. IBM has promised to buy back the bonds at a premium if the deal for Red Hat isn’t completed by April 28, 2020. The 10-year segment of the bond sale was priced with a yield 1.05 percentage points above Treasury yields, the same spread as the Bristol-Myers deal.
It may not be the case that Bristol-Myers and IBM are comparably risky, though. For one, shorter-term debt issued by the drugmaker sold with narrower spreads to Treasuries than IBM, implying less short-term risk. And broadly, the pharmaceutical industry is facing pricing pressure this year, says S&P Ratings, which means drugmakers such as Bristol-Myers could see downgrades.