los que querian info acerca del bono CHUBUT
interesante la tasa de colocacion - bastante inferior a la del estado nacional
Argentina Province Taps Markets With First Debt Sale Backed by Oil and Gas
By Drew Benson - Jul 21, 2010 6:36 PM GMT-0300 Wed Jul 21 21:36:25 UTC 2010
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Business ExchangeTwitterDeliciousDiggFacebookLinkedInNewsvinePropellerYahoo! BuzzPrint Mario Das Neves, governor of Argentina's Chubut province. Source: Gobierno del Chubut via Bloomberg
Argentina’s biggest crude-producing province is selling the country’s first oil and gas-backed securities since 2007 in a bid to borrow at lower rates in international debt markets.
Chubut is issuing this week $150 million of 10-year notes backed by royalties paid by BP PLC-controlled Pan American Energy LLC, Argentina’s biggest oil exporter, the province said in an advertisement published in El Cronista yesterday.
The Patagonian province, the second Argentine issuer to tap overseas debt markets since the federal government restructured $12.9 billion of defaulted debt last month, plans to pay an interest rate of 7.75 percent on the oil-backed notes, 375 basis points, or 3.75 percentage points, less than the coupon on bonds sold by IRSA Inversiones y Representaciones SA, Argentina’s biggest real estate developer, earlier this week.
Chubut’s use of the royalties to back its debt “seems like a smart thing for them to do,” said Eduardo Suarez, an emerging-markets strategist at Royal Bank of Canada in Toronto. “Without them, costs would be higher.”
Under terms of the securities, Buenos Aires-based Pan American pays its provincial royalties directly into trusts that set aside dollars for bond payments before passing the money on to the government. The notes, which have been sold by provinces including Neuquen and Salta, are also attractive to investors as they were among the few securities that didn’t fall into default when Argentina stopped payment on $95 billion of debt in 2001, said Veronica Sosa, an analyst at Buenos Aires research company Economia y Regiones.
“Under the trust, the provinces don’t get their hands on the royalties directly,” Sosa said.
Default Swaps
The cost of protecting Argentine debt against non-payment for five years with credit-default swaps fell 32 basis points yesterday to 881, according to data compiled by CMA DataVision. Credit-default swaps pay the buyer face value in exchange for the underlying securities or the cash equivalent should a government or company fail to adhere to its debt agreements.
The peso rose 0.1 percent to 3.9326 per dollar. The extra yield investors demand to hold Argentine dollar bonds instead of U.S. Treasuries fell 15 basis points to 731, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co. The difference is down from 846 on July 1.
Yields on Argentina’s benchmark dollar bonds due in 2015 slid nine basis points to 11.34 percent, according to pricing from Deutsche Bank AG. Warrants linked to economic growth fell 0.25 cent to 8.9 cents on the dollar.
Chubut Governor Mario Das Neves, who says on his website that he’ll run for president next year, announced plans to sell the oil-backed securities on a trip to New York last month. Telephone messages left at Das Neves’s press office weren’t returned.
Credit Ratings
The securities, known as VDFs, are being offered on domestic and international markets through trusts run by Bank of New York Mellon in the U.S. and Buenos Aires-based Banco de Valores SA, according to a pre-sale report by Moody’s Investors Service. They will be denominated in dollars for U.S. investors and dollar-linked for domestic buyers. Moody’s rates the foreign securities Ba3, three levels below investment grade, and the local notes Ba2.
Chubut will use proceeds of the bonds, the only asset- backed Argentine securities sold overseas, to build highways and housing, said Martin Fernandez, an analyst with Moody’s in Buenos Aires. The royalties will be primarily derived from the Cerro Dragon oilfield, Argentina’s largest. Pan American, which has operated the field since 1958, had its concession extended last year to 2027 from 2017, according to the country’s Planning Ministry.
“The operating fields, namely Cerro Dragon, and the company have very good track records,” Fernandez said. “That makes them interesting securities.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Drew Benson in Buenos Aires at
abenson9@bloomberg.net; Rodrigo Orihuela in Buenos Aires at
rorihuela@bloomberg.net