Indiabulls Housing Finance raises Rs 1,091 crore via foreign currency convertible bonds

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Indiabulls Housing Finance has raised USD 150 million (Rs 1,091 crore) by issuing foreign currency convertible bonds, the company said on Thursday. The securities issuance committee has approved the allotment of secured Foreign Currency Convertible Bonds (FCCBs) of USD 150 million, convertible into equity share of Rs 2 each, Indiabulls Housing Finance said in a regulatory filing.

The FCCBs, set to mature on March 4, 2026, bear a coupon rate of 4.5 per cent. The bonds are proposed to be listed on Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Ltd.

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Indiabulls said as many as 4,49,91,756 equity shares of the company would be in the trade-off with the FCCBs. This is Indiabulls Housing's debut convertible bond issuance. Besides, it is also the first FCCB by a financial institution from India in the last 10 years.

The housing finance company already raised Rs 2,671 crore through a qualified institutional placement (QIP) in September 2020, and a partial stake of its investment in the London based OakNorth Bank. "Thus, amidst challenging global and domestic macro environment, to date in FY2020-21, including the FCCB (assuming full conversion of the FCCBs at the option of the investor), IBH has raised the highest amount of equity capital of nearly Rs 3,750 crore (USD 515 million) amongst our AA rated NBFC/HFC peers," its MD and CEO Gagan Banga had said last week in a note to investors.

The company has strong capital adequacy of 30.5 per cent and a Tier 1 ratio of 23.7 per cent, well above the regulatory requirement. On tapping various sources to raise funds, Banga said convertibles have emerged as an alternative source of capital for Asian corporates, having raised USD 40 billion of capital through convertibles in the last 3 years.

"With this issuance, Indiabulls Housing Finance has one of the most diversified sources of funding among Indian corporates," he said. The company said macros have strongly turned for the residential housing market in India and it is on the cusp of an extended period of growth.

IBH hopes to realise better yields on its retail loans and also to diversify its loan book and customer base. It aims to increase the retail customer base by 1.5x by March 2023 and 2x by March 2025.

It has set a target to disburse Rs 1,500 crore retail loans a month by September 2021 and Rs 2,000 crore a month by March 2022. "We will have scaled up to 5 partners from the present 2 by June 2021 …With our current partners we have already achieved meaningful traction, we are scaling up to achieve Rs 1,500 crores of quarterly disbursals through co-lending by Sep 2021," Banga said.

Shares of Indiabulls Housing Finance closed at Rs 243.40 apiece on BSE, down 1.76 per cent from the previous close.