SHENZHEN-BASED Tencent Holdings Ltd. is returning to the market with a U.S. dollar bond that could raise about US$5 billion, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

The social media and gaming giant launched the sale yesterday of five-year, seven-year, 10-year and 30-year dollar bonds, showed a term sheet.

The term sheet did not detail the amount Tencent is looking to raise.

The bond sale could be Asia’s largest so far this year, Refinitiv data showed, exceeding property developer China Evergrande Group’s US$2.8 billion sale in January.

Tencent last tapped the bond market in January last year, raising US$5 billion.

The bonds were being marketed with indicative interest rates of 115, 140, 165 and 185 basis points (bps) over U.S. Treasuries for the five-year, seven-year, 10-year and 30-year tranches, respectively, the term sheet showed.

Tencent has a US$6 billion offshore issuance quota from China’s top economic planner, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the people said.

Proceeds from the sale will be used for refinancing and general corporate purposes, the term sheet showed.

Tencent said in an exchange filing Monday it had increased its Global Medium Term Note Program limit to US$20 billion from US$10 billion and that it planned to conduct an “international offering,” without specifying a size.

The company has hired Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as joint global coordinators for sale, Tencent said in Monday’s exchange filing.

Tencent suffered a rough 2018, as a nine-month hiatus in approving games for monetization in China prevented it from capitalizing on some of its most popular games.

Its net profit for the last quarter of 2018 dropped 32 percent, the steepest decline since Tencent went public in 2004, to 14.2 billion yuan (US$2.11 billion), in part due to one-off losses at portfolio firms.

(SD-Agencies)