Saudi state oil giant Aramco plans to raise at least $3 billion from a new bond issue that would be its first in three years, sources with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg on Tuesday.
Saudi Aramco plans to offer bonds with 10, 30, and 40 years of maturity and expects to begin meetings with fixed-income investors on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg's sources.
The proceeds from Aramco's new bond sale will likely go to refinancing existing borrowings and helping the investment program of the world's largest oil company by market value and production, Bloomberg's sources added.
The oil giant's bond issue would add to the Saudi government's tapping of the bond market twice so far this year to plug the budget deficit and finance the Kingdom's program to diversify its economy away from oil.
Earlier this year, Aramco's chief financial officer Ziad Al-Murshed said that the oil giant might issue a new bond in 2024 to optimize its capital structure. In the bond issue, Saudi Aramco would be looking at longer bond terms of up to 50 years, the executive said at the Saudi Capital Markets Forum in Riyadh.
The last time the world's top oil firm tapped the bond markets was in 2021, when Aramco raised $6 billion via its first Islamic bond denominated in U.S. dollars, the so-called sukuk, orders for which exceeded $60 billion.
The new Aramco bond comes weeks after Saudi Arabia raised $11.2 billion from a share sale of Aramco's stock.
Saudi Aramco made its debut on the Saudi Stock Exchange in December 2019 and raised around $30 billion in a share listing which became the world's largest ever.
Since the IPO, the Saudi rulers, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, have said on several occasions there would be more Aramco shale sales in the future.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. More