By Kate Hennessy, GCFO Liquid Telecom
Liquid Telecom, like most businesses, has to borrow money to ensure we can continue to operate day to day and to enable us to invest to fund our future growth.
Last week we refinanced this borrowing, and I am pleased to announce that this was hugely successful and will result in significantly lower borrowing costs for Liquid moving forward. Separately we have put in place a South African Rand denominated loan which will help to mitigate some of our currency exposure.
This was a landmark deal for an African business and demonstrated investor confidence in both Liquid Telecom and African businesses more widely despite the challenging times. The investor interest was unprecedented and was supported by significant commitments from three large Development Finance Institutions (DFIs).
The investor loan commitments totalled over $3.2 billion, more than five times the amount we have borrowed, helping to achieve a much lower interest rate than we had anticipated. At 5.5%, this was the lowest rate ever achieved by an African business with a comparable credit rating and it was also 3 percentage points lower than our debut bond in 2017.
The success of this reflects some fantastic work across the finance team but also the business more widely and my heartfelt thanks goes out to all those who have contributed and therefore enabled Liquid Telecom to continue to be at the forefront of digital transformation across Africa!
