Eurotorg RUB bond named Debut of the Year at Cbonds Awards

Eurotorg LLC (“Eurotorg” or the “Company”), the largest grocery retailer in Belarus, has won the prestigious Debut of the Year award at the Cbonds Awards 2019 for its RUB 10 billion five-year bond offering.

Andrey Zubkou, CEO of Eurotorg, said: “Eurotorg has consistently set the standard for Belarusian issuers in international capital markets. Last year Global Capital named us most impressive debut issuer in emerging markets for our debut Eurobond, and now our Russian market debut has followed suit. Awards such as these clearly show that the market recognises the strength of our investment case and our track record as an issuer, and also underscores the high degree of trust that investors have in the company.”

Eurotorg placed RUB 5 billion of five-year unsecured bonds with a coupon of 10.95% on Moscow Exchange in July 2019. Demand for the issue was more than twice the offer size, and investors placed more than 500 orders. The offering attracted not only institutional investors from Russia, but also retail investors and Western funds.

Following strong after-performance, and given substantial residual investor demand, Eurotorg successfully placed an additional RUB 5 billion issue with a premium to face value at a price of 103% in September 2019. As a result of the placement, the total volume of the bonds in circulation stands at RUB 10 billion.

BCS Global Markets, Gazprombank, Credit Bank of Moscow, Region Group and Renaissance Capital acted as arrangers of the initial issue. The additional issue was organized by the initial arrangers with VTB Capital and Sovcombank joined.

Prior to the issues in May 2019, Eurotorg became the first non-Russian company to receive a credit rating from a Russian rating agency. Expert RA assigned a rating of ruA- for the Company’s issue of bonds in Russian roubles, with a Stable outlook. The agency also assigned the Company an issuer credit rating of byA+ with a Stable outlook according to the national rating scale for Belarus.