State-run power giant NTPC on Wednesday said it has raised $450 million or nearly Rs 3,105 crore, through a five-year bond offering in the international markets. On Tuesday, the company launched a medium-term notes (MTN) issue under its $ 6 billion (approx Rs 41,400 crore) MTN programme.
NTPC’s $6 billion MTN Programme was set up in 2006 and this issuance was the tenth offering under the programme taking the cumulative amount raised to $4.30 billion.
NTPC intends to use the proceeds of the issue to finance its ongoing and new power projects, coal mining projects, acquisition of power plants and renovation and modernisation of power stations in accordance with the applicable guidelines of Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in relation to external commercial borrowings. The proceeds will be used for projects in India only.
The final order book was over $1.80 billion, an oversubscription of nearly four times, with orders from more than 100 accounts. In terms of geographical distribution, Asia took the bulk of the subscription at 90 per cent (of the $450 million MTN), with supplemental demand of ten per cent from Europe, Middle East and Africa and offshore US accounts, the statement said.
The distribution of investors was well diversified as fund managers took 69 per cent of the subscription of the MTN issue, followed by banks with 22 per cent, insurance/pension with 8 per cent and PB (private banks)/others (wealth manager) with one per cent, it said.
Plant Commissioned
In another development, the state-owned power giant kicked off commercial operation of its first project in the North-east — Unit 3 of Bongaigaon project — with 250 megawatt (MW) capacity.
The two units of 250 MW each of Bongaigaon project in Assam have already been made operational in June 2016 and March 2017. With the commissioning, the plant’s total generation capacity is 750 MW.