(Bloomberg) -- Ukraine’s power grid operator NPC Ukrenergo suspended servicing its dollar-denominated notes maturing in 2028 and announced it planned to reach a restructuring deal with bondholders.
The state-run company halted payments on $825 million of green bonds pending a restructuring agreement, it said in an emailed statement on Wednesday. The notes traded around 66 cents on the dollar and weren’t immediately affected by the disclosure.
“The company will temporarily suspend payments under the notes on the basis of the decision of the Ministry of Energy,” Ukrenergo said. “In the near future, the company intends to engage with the group of holders of the notes to agree a fair and consensual treatment of the notes that will contribute to the long-term financial stability of Ukrenergo.”
The suspension of Ukrenergo payments followed a $20 billion restructuring deal that Ukraine’s government clinched with debt holders in August, providing some relief for the country’s public finances. Had Ukrenergo continued to make regular coupon payments, the company would have granted an advantage to its bondholders compared with the sovereign’s creditors.
Ukrenergo is a crucial element of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, which has been severely battered by two years of Russian air strikes, leading to repeated blackouts across the country.
Sovereign Bond Rebound
The company issued the green bonds in 2021 and a year later, when Russia carried out its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, creditors agreed to defer payments on the debt for two years.
Ukraine’s sovereign bonds advanced broadly on Wednesday on news that Donald Trump won the US presidential election, a development that investors took as a signal that the war could end sooner rather than later.
Ukrenergo also faced a corporate governance conflict two months ago, with its chief executive officer — who was supported by foreign allies, was dismissed. Two of the company’s independent supervisory board members also resigned in protest.
Denys Sakva, an analyst at Kyiv-based investment bank Dragon Capital, said the suspension covers roughly $28 million in a regular coupon that Ukrenergo was scheduled to pay on Nov. 9. Some investors have been lured to Ukrenergo’s bonds by hopes that the notes could get a better restructuring deal than the sovereign, he said.
(Updates with latest on bond prices, background on Ukrenergo’s corporate governance starting in the second paragraph.)
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