2i Rete Gas conditionally accepts €435.11 million 1.125%, 1.75% notes

By Angela McDaniels

Tacoma, Wash., Feb. 21 – 2i Rete Gas SpA received tenders for €162,206,000 principal amount of its 1.75% notes due July 16, 2019 and €272.9 million principal amount of its 1.125% notes due Jan. 2, 2020, according to a company news release.

Subject to the satisfaction of a financing condition, the company has accepted all of the tendered notes for purchase. The company expects to announce on Feb. 28 whether the condition has been satisfied.

The company planned to price a series of new euro-denominated senior fixed-rate notes under its €3.5 billion euro medium-term notes program.

As previously reported, the company offered to buy back any and all of its €540 million 1.125% notes. For the €524,999,000 outstanding 1.75% notes, it had offered to repurchase up to an amount equal to €400 million less the principal amount of 1.125% notes accepted for purchase.

The tender offer began Feb. 14 and ended at 11 a.m. ET on Feb. 20.

After settlement, €362,793,000 of the 1.75% notes and €267.1 million of the 1.125% notes will remain outstanding.

The purchase price is 104.284% of par for the 1.75% notes and 103.199% of par for the 1.125% notes, assuming a settlement date of Feb. 28.

Holders also will receive accrued interest.

Pricing was set on Feb. 21 using a purchase yield of 0% for the 2020 notes and negative 0.05% for the 2019 notes.

The offers are part of the issuer’s “medium-term financial strategy aimed at proactively managing its liabilities and cost of debt financing,” according to a prior news release.

The company plans to cancel the notes acquired in the offers.

As announced Jan. 18, investors tendered €348,887,000 of the 1.75% notes in a capped offer for the two series of notes that began Jan. 10.

The purchase price was set at 104.329 using a purchase yield of 0% with accrued interest of 0.921%.

The company was tendering for up to €225 million of the two series of notes, but because the offer was oversubscribed, none of the tendered 1.125% notes were accepted for purchase.

The dealer managers in the latest tender offer are Banca IMI SpA (+39 02 7261 5938 or Liability.Management@bancaimi.com), BNP Paribas (+44 20 7595 8668 or liability.management@bnpparibas.com), Mediobanca – Banca di Credito Finanziario SpA (+39 02 8829 840 or MB_LM_CORP_IT@mediobanca.com), UniCredit Bank AG (+49 89 3781 3722 or corporate.lm@unicredit.de), Merrill Lynch International (+44 20 7996 5420 or DG.LM_EMEA@baml.com) and Societe Generale (+44 20 7676 7680 or liability.management@sgcib.com).

The tender agent is Lucid Issuer Services Ltd. (+44 20 7704 0880 or 2iretegas@lucid-is.com).

2i Rete distributes natural gas in Italy and is based in Milan.

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