Lenovo Group, the world’s largest personal-computer (PC) maker, plans to raise US$2 billion through a convertible-bond offering, with the proceeds earmarked to repurchase existing debt and buy back shares.
“Lenovo’s convertible bond issuance is more of a capital structure decision rather than an urgent need for cash infusion,” said Jing Jie Yu, an equity analyst at Morningstar. “Lenovo is occasionally acquisitive, and keeping a moderate level of debt with healthy maturities on its balance sheet allows it to better manage its overall cost of capital when engaging in merger and acquisition activity.”
Yu added that the planned use of the proceeds would not be out of the ordinary.
Even without share buy-backs, assuming that all of the existing 2029 convertible bonds were cancelled and the latest bond issuance was fully converted, the net dilution effect would only be roughly 3 per cent – largely immaterial to existing investors, Yu said.
Shares of Lenovo dropped 1.45 per cent to HK$24.52 on Thursday morning trading.
