Alphabet Launches €6B Seven-Part Euro Bond; Orders Top €17B

Google parent Alphabet began selling €6bn ($6.7bn) of bonds on Monday, splitting the deal into one floating-rate note and six fixed-rate notes with maturities of two to 19 years, and drew more than €17bn of orders in what The Next Web framed as the first test of AI debt since last week's selloff.

The timing is the story. Alphabet's shares fell more than 12% last Thursday, their "worst day on record, wiping about $500bn off the company's market value," and the stock "lost almost 19% in October, its worst month ever." Barclays, BNP Paribas and Deutsche Bank are managing the deal, and Alphabet said proceeds will go to general corporate purposes, "which may include repaying debt."

The build-out behind the trade is large. "Alphabet expects capital spending of up to $205bn this year, most of it on data centres and chips," and it has also signed "$130.5bn in future lease payments that are not yet on its balance sheet, according to the filing cited by Reuters." Its 4.1% note due 2031 was trading at about 95 cents on the dollar heading into the new sale.

Alphabet is not alone in the queue. Oracle, which capped new fundraising at $20B last week, began its own $10B bond sale alongside a $10B share offering on the same Monday, a parallel we tracked earlier today. This is Alphabet's second euro deal of the year, after a €9bn sale in May.

Reuters, per the article, reports that analysts expect big tech companies to sell more bonds in Europe to fund their infrastructure plans; the region's debt markets are deep, and a euro sale spreads the borrowing beyond the crowded dollar market.