Adani Enterprises raises ₹1,000 crore via short-term bond issue

MUMBAI: Adani Enterprises Ltd tapped the corporate debt market on Tuesday, raising ₹1,000 crore, merchant bankers told Mint. Of the total issue size, ₹300 crore was reserved for anchor investors, while the remaining ₹700 crore was was made available for bidding.

ICICI Prudential Asset Management Co. Ltd was the sole investor in the non-anchor portion of ₹700 crore, according to a senior merchant banker.

The funds were raised through privately placed bonds maturing on 24 March 2028. The bonds carry a coupon rate of 8.70%, payable semi-annually, with allotment to investors scheduled for Wednesday. The issue has been rated AA- by Icra Ltd.

This latest fundraise follows Adani Enterprises’ ₹1,000-crore public bond issue in July, which offered two-, three-, and five-year maturities at coupon rates between 8.95% and 9.30%. Earlier, the company had raised ₹800 crore through a public issue in September 2024.

“100% of the proceeds of the Issue will be utilized by the Issuer for prepayment or repayment, in full or in part, of the indebtedness (including internal debt) of the Issuer and/or providing loans to its subsidiaries and for general corporate purposes,” as per the term sheet.

This bond issuance comes amid a broader slowdown in corporate debt offerings, triggered by rising yields.

On Monday, Mint reported that corporate bond sales in the September quarter fell to ₹2 trillion, down from ₹3.44 trillion in the June quarter and ₹3.2 trillion a year earlier, according to data from primedatabase.com.

The decline coincided with a rise in yields on 10-year bonds issued by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), which serve as a benchmark for the corporate debt market. Nabard bond yields jumped 18-20 basis points (bps) to 7.24%, mirroring a 20-bps increase in the 10-year government bond yield to 6.50%.

Market participants attribute the slowdown to the Reserve Bank of India’s June monetary policy, when the central bank shifted its stance from accommodative to neutral while cutting interest rates by 50 basis points. This created uncertainty over the future trajectory of rates, dampening issuer confidence, with many companies opting to wait for clearer signals before committing to long-term borrowing.

In addition, elevated sovereign and state borrowing have crowded out corporate issuances, contributing to weak demand for long-term papers.

In an unrelated development, last month, markets regulator the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) dismissed some of the allegations of stock manipulation against Gautam Adani and his group of companies made by US short-seller Hindenburg Research in 2023.