Bruce Power Inc., a nuclear power generation company based in Ontario and owned by a subsidiary of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System’s infrastructure platform, has completed its inaugural senior unsecured bond issuance.
The issuance raised C$1.5 billion ($1.07 billion) across tranches of five-, seven- and 10-year notes, according to an OMERS Infrastructure announcement Tuesday. The transaction is the largest domestic holding company bond issuance to date in the Canadian power and utilities sector, OMERS Infrastructure stated.
The issuance was made through BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust, the holding company for OMERS’ stake in Bruce Power. Bruce Power had previously issued nearly $2 billion in bonds, but this was the first sold by the OMERS holding company.
In September, Fitch assigned BPC Generation Infrastructure Trust’s first-time long-term issuer default rating of BBB- and assigned the same rating and a stable outlook to the planned senior unsecured notes.
“This transaction marks a milestone in Canadian infrastructure financing. The scale, pricing, and investor engagement in this process reflects the high quality and underlying strength of the Bruce Power investment and the caliber of our outstanding team,” said Michael Hill, OMERS Infrastructure’s global head, in a statement. “Through this process, we have now built a scalable platform to access, and further collaborate with, Canadian debt capital markets.”
OMERS has been invested in Bruce Power since 2003, acquiring a stake from British Energy, and has been its majority owner since 2014. The power company provides 30% of Ontario’s energy generation—approximately 6,500 megawatts of peak energy.
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Tags: Bruce Power, Infrastructure, OMERS, Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System Infrastructure