Bright Food Hong Kong Ltd. issues dollar bonds successfully

On May 13 London time, Bright Food Hong Kong Ltd. priced its dollar bonds in London successfully and thus became Shanghai’s first state-owned enterprise that had issued international bonds. The bond issuance was highly praised by market investors, with the fund raised reaching 500 million U.S. dollars and the market subscription exceeding 3 billion U.S. dollars. The final price was 3.123 percent, 20 basis points lower than the price originally set. This marked complete success of Bright Food Group in its debut in the international capital market.

Cao Xiaofeng, CFO of Bright Food Group, Li Lin, general manager of the Financial Department and Gan Lanxin, general manager of the Legal Department, arranged 20 investor meetings during their three-day global road show from May 8 to 10 in Hong Kong, Singapore and London, introducing Bright Food Group to more than 100 investors, many of whom showed great interest in the group even during the road show. The bonds attracted participation of 191 investors, including many internationally renowned investors. The investors were reasonably distributed. With respect to the location of the investors, 82 percent of the investors were in Asia and 18 percent in Europe. Of the investors, 50 percent are fund assets managers, 26 percent are banks, 15 percent are insurance companies and 9 percent private banks.

The group attached great importance to and made full preparations for the bond issuance. The success of the issuance showed that Bright Food Group had opened up the financing channel to the international capital market. The group issued dollar bonds to replace the annexation loan it used to acquire the Vitamax Food Beverages (Fujian) Co., Ltd. Before the bond issuance, Bright Food Group passed reevaluation of the three international rating agencies - Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, which all maintained the investment-grade rating results.