Cemex sold US$1bn in seven-year bonds at a yield of 9.125 per cent on Tuesday, IFR said, to help pay 2012 debt and avoid a repayment bottleneck.
Cemex said earlier on Tuesday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission it was offering a "private placement ... sold only to qualified institutional buyers and to offshore investors."
In a separate SEC filing, Monterrey-based Cemex, one of Latin America’s top publicly-traded companies, said it won approval from its bankers last month to use money from bond placements to prepay commercial paper maturing in 2012.
According to IFR, a Thomson Reuters service, the bond’s coupon was nine per cent and the deal was heavily oversubscribed, in a sign that investors were optimistic about the timing amid hopes for a rebound in the United States, where Cemex is the top cement maker.
"More and more people are believing the US recovery story," said Carlos Legaspy, president of San Diego-based Precise Investment Management, which holds Cemex bonds and put in an order for the paper.
