Sony Plans Bond Sale Next Month After Delay to Repay Debt
February 10, 2012, 3:56 AM ESTBy Yusuke Miyazawa
(Updates with previous sale plan in third paragraph.)
Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp. plans to sell bonds in March to repay debt after delaying its initial plan for a December offering.
Nomura Holdings Inc., Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co. and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. will help Japan’s largest consumer-electronics exporter with the sale, Nomura said in an e-mailed statement today.
Sony said Nov. 29 it postponed its plan to sell bonds in December, after announcing it hired the three banks for an offering four days earlier, according to separate statements from Nomura. The Tokyo-based manufacturer has 100 billion yen ($1.3 billion) of bonds maturing this year, including 60 billion yen due in June, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the maker of Bravia televisions and PlayStation 3 game consoles on Jan. 20 by one step to Baa1, its third lowest investment grade, while Standard & Poor’s cut its rating one level Feb. 8 to BBB+, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Sony’s credit profile remains “under strong pressure because of the structural challenges the company is facing in the digital AV market,” Moody’s said in a Feb. 6 statement.
The extra yield investors demand to own Sony’s 1.57 percent notes due June 2015 instead of government debt rose to 23 basis points yesterday from 20.1 on Nov. 25, according to Japan Securities Dealers Association prices on Bloomberg.
--Editors: Pavel Alpeyev, Katrina Nicholas
To contact the reporter on this story: Yusuke Miyazawa in Tokyo at ymiyazawa3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Shelley Smith at ssmith118@bloomberg.net
