Commercial Bank, Qatar’s first private bank, has successfully launched a senior unsecured five-year bond worth $500M at a new price benchmark. The transaction was launched at the set spread of +175 bps over 5-year Mid Swaps and priced at a coupon rate of 2.00 percent and yield of 2.083 percent . The issue was also oversubscribed 3.8x.
This transaction marked CBQ’s successful return to the US dollar public markets since 2018 and effectively repriced CBQ’s funding curve down.
Joseph Abraham, Group Chief Executive Officer of Commercial Bank attributed the success to very positive views from investors on Qatar’s strong economy and fiscal buffers, and the strength of Qatar’s banking system.
Investors have positively viewed the strong execution of CBQ’s five-year strategy which has significantly improved the performance of the Bank.
Some of the highlights of the transaction include: negative 15bps new issue premium with Fair Value (FV) calculated at +190bps ahead of book-building based on the trading levels of CB 2023s; at 2.083 percent yield and 2.000 percent coupon, CBQ registered the lowest funding levels achieved on a US dollar public transaction.
This is also the second lowest coupon ever achieved by a Qatari FI issuer on a public transaction. Impressive 40bps compression on the day with very little impact to the final order book. This represents the biggest tightening on a conventional senior FI GCC bond since 2019.
Despite a busy market and two previous Qatari FI issuances in as many weeks, CBQ was able to attract close to 140 investors with very few dropping despite strong price revisions. Order book of $2.3bn before final book standing at $1.9bn, reflecting an 3.8x oversubscription despite the price tightening during the book build.
