“Nova Poshta, a leading logistics operator in Ukraine, notes a fairly strong demand for its bonds from a wide range of investors: insurance companies, pension funds, investment funds, and banks, which allows it to successfully place them.
“We have about UAH 60 million in investments from pension funds. Some people may think that the pension fund market in Ukraine is not developed, but we see that it is,” said NOVA CFO Petro Fokov at the Ukrainian CFO Forum held in Kyiv on October 24-25.
He clarified that Nova Poshta is currently conducting private placements of bonds among institutional investors, which are specified in the prospectus, but individuals can also buy them on the secondary market.
“We do have individuals (bondholders), but there are not so many of them compared to banks, insurance and pension funds,” Fokov stated.
The Nova Group CFO noted that Nova Poshta is one of the leading issuers of hryvnia bonds in Ukraine and in January 2023 became the first issuer to resume issuing after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion.
According to him, the advantage of hryvnia bonds for the issuer is the absence of collateral, which is currently difficult to assess for bank loans.
“But they (the bonds) are more expensive and require a little more transparency, i.e., you need to disclose a little more information on the website, but they have their advantages,” Fokov added.
He noted that the Nova group, whose companies also include NovaPay Credit, likes to support the bond market with an interesting offer and feels responsible for ensuring that these are reliable and stable instruments. “And people trusted such instruments as corporate bonds more than government bonds,” the CFO said.
According to him, in general, the group, whose investments this year will double the investments of 2021 and amount to UAH 8.5 billion, also uses loans from international financial organizations and banks for debt financing.
Fokov specified that among the IFIs, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is the first, with which the group signed a loan for UAH 3 billion this year.
“We take out loans from the EBRD in hryvnia, in hryvnia, because we are a hryvnia company, we do not take unnecessary risks, we want to be sure that we can repay the loan, so we calculate everything,” he added.
As for bank lending, the CFO said that the group cooperates with 10 leading Ukrainian banks.
According to him, having so many partner banks, each of which has its own requirements, Nova follows a strategy of complete unification of covenants, taking the most developed system of financial covenants of the EBRD as a basis.
“It covers all issues, all points. That is why we offer all our partner banks, with whom we are additionally starting to cooperate, to simply join this system of covenants or choose some requirements from this menu, so to speak. But not to give any exotic new requirements. We have managed to do it so far,” Fokov said.
As reported, in August of this year, Nova Poshta announced the placement of an issue of interest-bearing unsecured bonds of the F series with a total nominal value of UAH 1 billion. The bonds will mature on June 10, 2026, bear an interest rate of 16% per annum, mature on June 5, 2026, and have a face value of UAH 1 thousand.
Nova Poshta registered a report on the placement of the previous E series issue of the same volume with a maturity date of August 8, 2025 and an interest rate of 17% per annum with the NSSMC on July 4 this year. Most of it, worth UAH 650 million, was purchased in May by Oschadbank (Kyiv). It was clarified that this is the third deal since 2019 for the state-owned bank to finance Nova Poshta by purchasing corporate bonds.
As of the middle of this year, Nova Poshta’s liabilities on E series bonds amounted to UAH 995.16 million, F series – UAH 994.88 million, and on previously issued D series bonds maturing at the end of January 2025 – UAH 818.51 million.
As of the end of June this year, Nova Poshta’s total liabilities on bonds amounted to UAH 2 billion 808.55 million, while its liabilities to banks amounted to UAH 3 billion 136.12 million, and the total amount of liabilities and collateral amounted to UAH 15 billion 562.04 billion.
In 2023, Nova Poshta made two bond issues – “C” and “D” – each with a nominal amount of UAH 800 million. The C series bonds were issued for a 12-month term with a 24% p.a. interest rate, while the D series bonds were issued for a 20-month term with a 23% p.a. interest rate.
Earlier, in February 2023, the company redeemed the UAH 700 million Series B bonds issued in March 2020.
In the first half of 2024, Nova Poshta LLC increased its unconsolidated net income by 20.1% to UAH 20.12 billion, but the company’s net profit increased by 20.1%.
