Bond Market News

JSW Group’s port operating entity, JSW Infrastructure plans to issue $400mn via bonds and spend $1.3bn in capital expenditure over five years. Sources said that the proceeds from the bonds will primarily be used to replace more expensive rupee debt. JSW Infra has an outstanding debt of ~INR 37.2bn ($500mn). Regarding the capital expenditure plans, Arun Maheshwari, joint managing director and CEO at JSW Infra said that most of the capex will be on greenfield port projects together with their planned facility at Nargol Gujarat which has an economic interest. “Bringing a greenfield port and putting in place a capex plan for that is always on the wishlist. Any greenfield port will cost around INR 5,000-7,000 crore ($673-942mn),” mentioned Maheshwari.

ET reports that JSW Infra has been known as a port operator for captive cargo for its parent’s businesses. CEO Maheshwari added that the third-party cargo as a percentage of total business increased to 25% in 2020 from 6-8% in 2018. He added that they planned to increase it to 40% by 2023. He mentioned that the expansion in this segment is challenging as there is inadequate backend infrastructure. Currently JSW moves 13-14 million coastal cargo and plans to increase it to 20 million tons.

JSW’s 5.95% 2024s were stable at 107, yielding 3.16%

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