Uzbek private equity firm Abu Dhabi Uzbek Investment (ADUI) has put 110bn Uzbek soum ($10.1m) into key Uzbek fertiliser producer Ifoda via a bond project.
Central Asia-focused Bluestone Investment Bank acted as adviser to Ifoda, the bond issuer, on the placement of the securities.
ADUI, a $1bn company headquartered in Tashkent and established by two sovereign wealth funds – the Uzbekistan Fund for Reconstruction and Development and the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development – bought the whole issue of what are five-year convertible bonds, according to a joint statement by Ifoda and ADUI.
The United Arab Emirates’ investment portfolio in Uzbekistan is “close to over $5bn in various sectors of the economy”, the statement quoted ADUI chief executive Timur Rakhmanov as saying.
The bond is Ifoda’s second major transaction in the last three years – in December 2020, the company sold a minority stake to Japanese diversified group Balcom Co Ltd for $10m.
Ifoda, Uzbekistan’s largest private producer of fertilisers and crop protection products, had a revenue of about $20m for 2021, the statement said.
It plans to use proceeds from the bond to boost local sales and exports to Asian, European and African countries and to modernise its governance, according to the statement.
Ifoda, which was set up in 1998, initially specialised in distributing imported crop protection products in Uzbekistan but in 2017 launched its own production at a newly built facility in the Namangan region. Today it supplies products of more than 150 types to over 30,000 Uzbek farmers, the statement said.
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