Helaba and UniCredit are arranging the fixed and floating rate transaction, offering three, five, seven and 10 years at pricing margins of 90bp-110bp, 110bp-130bp, 140bp-160bp and 160bp-180bp respectively. Order books close on August 6.
Buzzi Unicem has issued a Schuldschein once before. In July 2017 it launched a debut €250m triple tranche Schuldschein, with half of the intended volume being issued by its German subsidiary, Dyckerhoff.
In 2017, arrangers Commerzbank, LBBW and UniCredit offered pricing margins of 125bp-145bp over Euribor for Buzzi Unicem’s five year fixed or floating euro debt, 145bp-165bp for seven years and 155bp-175bp for 10 years.
The margins were lower for Dyckerhoff, which had issued Schuldscheine before — with ranges of 110bp-130bp for five years, 130bp-150bp for seven years and 155bp-175bp for the 10 year tranche.
"The margins are tighter for Buzzi's new transaction because of investors knowing more about the credit, and a ratings upgrade in between the two issues," said a banker familiar with the deal.
Standard and Poor's revised Buzzi’s credit rating from BB+ to BBB- in September 2018.
Southern Europe
In a private debt roundtable published by GlobalCapital in mid-June, bankers from Helaba, Raiffeisen Bank International and UniCredit each thought southern Europe would be a source of growth for the market.
Irene Öhlinger at RBI said: “Italy has been very much a closed market, where a lot of funding took place locally. Of course, it takes time for these issuers to acknowledge, and they may have to pay a little more over local funding initially, but they’ll start to appreciate the Schuldschein instrument for the additional benefits, like access to new investors.”
“We saw the first transaction in France five or six years ago,” said Patrick Mannl from UniCredit. “If you have a track record of five or six transactions from that country, it’s only a matter of time for the seventh, eighth and ninth to come. Italy is still young in that respect.”