TECH giant Tencent is expected to sell four tranches of bonds worth US$ 5 billion Jan. 19, according to the company’s announcement released Friday.

The four tranches include 5-, 10-, and 20-year fixed-rate bonds at 2.985 percent, 3.595 percent, and 3.925 percent, respectively, and 5-year floating-rate bonds at 0.605 percent over three-month LIBOR (London Interbank Offered Rate).

Currently, Tencent’s bond rates are above U.S. Treasury securities. The bonds selling plan is part of the company’s US$ 10 billion medium-term bonds issuing plan announced Jan. 9.

According to Bloomberg, the Tencent deal attracted orders totaling more than US$ 41 billion, and nearly half of investors are from the U.S.

The global rating agency Moody’s has assigned a rating of A2, meaning low risk of default, to the Tencent bonds. The rating is one level below China’s business titan Alibaba’s bonds, issued last November.

Last year, Chinese companies issued a record high of US$ 180 billion dollar-denominated bonds in overseas markets, a 70 percent surge from 2016, according to a Xinhua news agency report citing Bloomberg’s data.

This year, the size is expected to reach US$ 200 billion, the Xinhua report stated based on remarks from industry insiders.

(SD-Agencies)