THACO completes $86 mln bond issue

The bonds, each worth VND1 billion ($43,000) are secured by the company’s properties. Two institutional investors have bought up the entire issue, the automaker said Friday in a statement without disclosing their identities. 

THACO said it was part of its plan to raise VND3 trillion ($129 million) through five-year bonds which would have a fixed coupon of 9.8 percent in the first two years before becoming a floating rate equivalent to the reference interest rate at the time plus 3.2 percent. 

The reference interest rate is the average interest rate of 12-month dong deposits at Vietnam’s four major state-owned lenders, BIDV, Vietcombank, Agribank, and Vietinbank. 

The automaker had said late last year it planned to raise money through bond issues to augment its operating capital and fund capex including on showrooms and production facilities. 

The money raised would not be used to retire debts or buy stakes in other companies, it said. 

At the beginning of this year THACO chairman Tran Ba Duong said the automaker was entering the third year of its strategy to become a diversified company. 

Besides automobile, agriculture and construction, its main businesses, it has also expanded into logistics and retail, he added. 

The company has yet to release its annual statements for 2019, but had reported last October that its profits in the first half of 2019 had fallen 40 percent year-on-year as a result of ballooning costs. 

THACO is a leading manufacturer of foreign vehicles in Vietnam like Peugeot, Kia and Mazda, and it is next planning to build BMW cars.