KUALA LUMPUR: Cagamas Bhd, the national mortgage corporation, has surpassed half of its target issuance for the year following a RM2.3bil equivalent dual currency issuance over three days earlier this month.

In a statement, the company said the issuance comprised a three-year US$350mil senior unsecured notes, five-year RM500mil Islamic medium term notes (IMTN) and five-year RM225mil conventional medium term notes (CMTN).

The US dollar conventional bond was issued through the company’s wholly owned subsidiary, Cagamas Global PLC under Cagamas’ US$2.5bil multicurrency medium term note programme while the ringgit bonds and sukuk were issued under its existing RM40bil IMTN/MTN programmes.

Cagamas chief executive officer Datuk Chung Chee Leong said the three-year tenured US dollar issuance would further strengthen its established position in the international bond market, as the company boosted its US dollar bond outstanding amount by 48% from US$730mil to US$1.08bil.

“Despite a challenging backdrop that included global geopolitical uncertainty and the surprise announcement of a snap election in the UK coupled with an active US dollar primary issuance pipeline within Asia, the issuance was competitively priced at 115 bps over the three-year US Treasury (UST) bonds yielding 2.53%,” he said.

The issuance attracted investors from Luxembourg, the UK, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates as well as countries across Asia.

On the local front, the ringgit deal of a combined five-year tenured RM725mil Islamic and conventional medium term notes was competitively priced at 4.25%, representing a weighted average spread of 40bps over the respective five-year local currency Government benchmark curve.

“The RM500mil Islamic notes were issued through a public offering and gained participation from a diversified group of investors including sovereign wealth funds and foreign asset managers,” Chung said.

“The conventional notes of RM225mil were priced via private placement the following day which evidenced continued demand and confidence in the company’s credit strength.’

The issuances bring Cagamas’ aggregate issuance for the year to RM5.6bil, representing more than 50% of the targeted RM11bil issuance for the year.