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GP to raise Tk 425cr through bonds

Sohel Parvez and Md Hasan
Grameenphone is set to raise Tk 425 crore through issuing bonds, a move that promises to shore up the country's ailing bond market, officials said yesterday.
The country's largest mobile operator, majority-controlled by Norway's Telenor, has received the green light from the Securities and Exchange Commission to raise the funds through private placement, an SEC official toldThe Daily Star.
According to the official, the value of the two-year tenure bond will be Tk 1.0 crore each and the coupon rate will be no more than 14.50 percent.
A bond is a debt instrument, in which the issuer owes the holder a debt and is obliged to repay the principal and interest at maturity.
"We have approved GP's proposal to raise the funds from the bond market,” said another high official of the
capital market regulator.
"As the process is ongoing, I won't comment further on the issue," Yamin Bakht, director of public relations for GP, told The Daily Star by phone.
The cellphone operator had earlier moved to raise $300 million (Tk 2,058 crore) -- $150 million from the stock market and the rest through private placement or pre-IPO. The initial public offering proposed is still pending with the SEC.
GP sought approval from SEC for bonds before submitting the IPO proposal.
The GP move came at a time when the company was passing through a "critical financial period".
The cellphone operator's operating profit nosedived 89 percent to Tk 51.10 crore in the second quarter to June fromTk 4,26.9 crore in the same period a year ago.
The company's market share narrowed from 63 percent in 2006 to 47 percent as of June 2008.
In the six-operator market, however, GP still stays in the leading position with 20.84
million customers followed by Egyptian Orascom Telecom's Banglalink with 10 million customers and Aktel with 7.98 million customers as of July.
GP -- 62 percent owned by Telenor -- was the most profitable part of the Norwegian company's global mobile network for the last quarter of 2006.
In line with the company's half-yearly performance until June, its revenue earnings also saw a negative trend. The company's revenues dropped 2 percent in June to Tk 2,8686.43 crore compared to TK 2,944.9 crore in June last year.
In the three months to June 30, GP's EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation) margins had decreased by 43 percent to Tk 388.00 crore from Tk 689 crore a year earlier.
The company has faced charges of anomalies, including international call termination through VoIP. The company paid Tk 418.4 crore in fine
for its alleged involvement in VoIP
Analysts said GP's entry to the bond market would help develop the country's bond market.
"It's definitely a good move for the development of the bond market," said Muhammad A (Rumee) Ali, a former deputy governor of Bangladesh Bank.
Ali, also chairman of BRAC Bank, however said the problem in Bangladesh's bond market is that bonds are not easily tradable.
"The market for bonds is very limited which means that buyers have to hold them up to the maturity period," he said. "This is one of the reasons for limiting the growth of the bond market."
The banker suggested that there should be scope to trade fyonds easily so that buyers can liquidate their holdings whenever they need.
sohel@thedailystar.net hasan@thedailystar.net