The telecom unit of Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group Corp. sold one of the biggest yen bonds of the fiscal year started April, taking advantage of a recovery in credit-market sentiment as the Bank of Japan showed its commitment to easy monetary policy.
SoftBank Corp. raised 120 billion yen ($831 million) from notes across four tenors. It follows other large deals including Mitsui Fudosan Co.’s 130 billion yen offering and Kubota Corp.’s 120 billion yen sale.
BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda has repeatedly emphasized the downside risks to inflation and the need for continued stimulus, and that’s helped yield premiums on Japanese corporate bonds to drop to a six-month low on reduced bets of a policy tightening. Other mammoth yen deals are in the pipeline such as NTT Finance Corp. planned sale of about 300 billion yen in notes while overseas issuers like BPCE SA are actively tapping the samurai bond market.
SoftBank’s mobile unit, which is rated at AA- by Japan Credit Rating Agency Ltd., offered a coupon of 0.82% for a five-year bond, according to SMBC Nikko Securities Inc., one of the underwriters. That’s higher than the average of 0.6% for Japanese corporate notes with the same tenor and rating this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
