Kuwait draws strong demand for three-part US dollar bond sale

By Rachna Uppal

ABU DHABI, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Kuwait, a top oil producer, attracted substantial demand for its three-part bond offering on Tuesday, indicating strong investor appetite for the state's first sovereign U.S. dollar issue since 2017.

Orderbooks for the 3-year, 5-year and 10-year maturities were over $20 billion at around 1000 GMT, fixed-income news service IFR reported, and remained open.

"There has been significantly more interest in Kuwait amongst fixed-income investors this year," said Justin Alexander, director at Khalij Economics and Gulf analyst at GlobalSource Partners.

"There are plenty of concerns about Kuwait’s governance, public finances, oil dependence and limited non-oil economy. Despite this, investors are reassured by the fact that Kuwait has so little outstanding debt," Alexander said.

Kuwait also has estimated sovereign wealth assets of over $1 trillion.

It passed a new debt law in March after the previous one expired years ago, allowing the country to tap debt markets to diversify funding sources and support the state's economic diversification agenda and reduce reliance on oil revenue.

Reforms - like the public debt law - had been gridlocked for years over persistent clashes between appointed governments and Kuwait's directly elected parliament.

Kuwait's emir temporarily dissolved parliament last year for up to four years, paving the way for the government to implement structural reforms .

Early price indications for the sovereign bond's 3-year portion were at 70 basis points over U.S. Treasuries, and at 75 bps over the same benchmark for the five-year tranche, while the 10-year part carried an initial price guidance of 85 bps.

Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan and Mizuho are acting as joint global coordinators, lead managers and bookrunners for the issue.

($1 = 0.3056 Kuwaiti dinars)