Paramount Skydance's investment-grade bond offering, aimed at raising funds for its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, attracted demand more than three times the expected issue size.
According to people familiar with the matter, investor orders for the bond sale exceeded $109 billion by the time the order book closed on Tuesday afternoon, equivalent to 3.6 times the anticipated offering size. Lenders had previously shifted part of the financing toward loans.
Data shows that, by comparison, dollar-denominated investment-grade bond deals so far this year have averaged subscription coverage of about four times the issue size.
Paramount's high-grade bond offering is the largest component of a $52 billion financing package, which also includes junk bonds and loans. This year, massive debt sales by hyperscale cloud computing companies to fund artificial intelligence infrastructure have dominated the market, making Paramount's deal particularly noteworthy.
People familiar with the matter said the U.S. media giant has reduced the planned bond offering by $2 billion to $30 billion, while increasing the loan portion by the same amount.
The deal will offer eight tranches of first-lien dollar-denominated bonds, with maturities ranging from 2 to 40 years. People familiar with the matter said the longest-dated tranche, maturing in 2066, was initially discussed at a spread of about 3.65 percentage points over U.S. Treasury yields.
The people added that Apollo Global Management, Bank of America, and Citigroup are leading the offering, which is expected to be priced on Wednesday.