By Jason Chau

Shares of Nippon Steel dropped sharply after the Japanese steelmaker announced plans to sell close to $4 billion in convertible bonds to fund its acquisition of United States Steel Corp.

Nippon Steel is issuing two tranches of zero coupon bonds convertible to stock acquisition rights, due in 2029 and 2031, the company said Tuesday. Each bond issuance will raise 300 billion yen, equivalent to $1.92 billion, for a total of $3.85 billion.

The issuance was increased from its previously announced plans to raise a total of 550 billion yen from the two bonds.

The steelmaker said the bond issuance is aimed at re-financing outstanding debt from its acquisition of U.S. Steel in June 2025. It had previously financed the deal with a bridge credit facility of around 2 trillion yen and that loan is approaching maturity.

The company is also seeking to bolster its earnings base through the bond sale as it eyes total investment of around 6 trillion yen in the next five years, it added.

The bond issuance is the largest in Japanese corporate history, Jefferies analysts Thanh Ha Pham and Sayaka Shimonishi said in a note. They expect the sale's net proceeds will be fully used by around June 2026 to repay the bridge loan arising from the U.S Steel deal.

"We'd expect potential dilution and debt servicing costs to weigh on the stock," they added.

Its stock fell as much as 6.0% in Tokyo trade early Wednesday before recovering slightly. Shares were last trading 5.6% lower.

Write to Jason Chau at jason.chau@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 25, 2026 01:09 ET (06:09 GMT)

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