Maersk, a Danish shipping conglomerate, has successfully raised $1.25 billion as proceeds in two bond offerings. The net proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes, as stated by the company.
This is the first ever US Dollar bond offering for the shipping line, which was underwritten by Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Citigroup, JP Morgan and Royal Bank of Scotland.
The bonds were priced at $750 million for four-year bond, which will be due in September 2019, and another $500 million for 10-year bond due in September 2024. Both tranches are expected to be rated BBB+ by S&P and Baa1 by Moody’s.
It would be recalled that Maersk delivered consistently stable results for 2013 and 2014. In the first half of 2014 alone, Maersk increased profits by more than 55 percent to $1.1 billion, joining only six of the 17 largest publicly-traded companies to be profitable in the first half of this year with the 17 collectively posting a margin of negative -0.5 percent, according to report released by Alphaliner.
“Maersk Line is the most profitable shipping line in the container industry and we are not giving up the position as the world’s largest on my watch,” Soren Skou, Maersk Line chief executive officer, said in an interview with Danish daily Berlingske Tidende.
