Apple Inc might sell its first yen bonds, in a move that would further diversify its fundraising currencies after making debut offerings in euros and the Swiss franc.
The iPhone maker hired Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc to arrange a series of fixed income investor calls starting on Thursday next week, and a potential yen offering might follow, Goldman Sachs said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. A sale would be the first in the Japanese currency for Apple, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Apple this week announced it was boosting its capital return program by US$70 billion through March 2017 and that it would be accessing US and international debt markets to help pay for it. The company has raised the equivalent of more than US$40 billion in debt in less than two years to help finance dividends and buybacks, letting it return more money to investors without incurring US taxes on foreign profits.
The California-based tech company offered 1.25 billion Swiss francs (US$1.34 billion) in bonds in February and 2.8 billion euros (US$3.1 billion) in notes in November last year, according to Bloomberg-compiled data. It ended the January-March quarter with US$194 billion in cash.
A yen debt sale would allow Apple to take advantage of Japanese corporate borrowing costs near record lows. The average yield on yen samurai bonds sold by overseas issuers was 0.47 percent on Thursday, three basis points from the 0.44 percent level in January that was the lowest on record in Bank of America Merrill Lynch data.
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