MOMDJIAN Our annual funding need totaled A$3.5 billion (US$2.3 billion). We printed A$2.5 billion across two deals in the first half to take advantage of favourable conditions while minimising refinancing and funding risk.

We issued an A$850 million 10-year domestic bond with 23 basis points tightening to IPTs [initial price thoughts] and a €1 billion (US$1.1 billion) eight- and 12-year bond with 40 basis points tightening to IPTs across both tranches.

We followed up these deals by printing a A$1 billion equivalent US private placement (USPP) 11-, 13-, 15- and 20-year bond in the second half, across a record Australian combination of nine tranches and five currencies.

All three deals individually underscored the strength of global credit markets in 2024 and the solid appetite for our credit across Australia, Asia, Europe and the US – such that we didn’t have to compromise on tenor.

MCHUGH Melbourne Airport had about A$1.5 billion to do in 2024. We are quite conservative and the experience over the last two years has taught us to access markets when things are good – we prefer to de-risk our financing task and access markets earlier while balancing cost of carry. We did our larger euro transaction in the first half of the year for this reason.

We considered bringing our second deal forward but we seek to match our financing with our capex plans, we were quietly confident about conditions in the run-up to the US election and we have the benefit of having access to multiple markets. Conditions remained very strong in the weeks leading up to the US election, which is when we accessed the domestic market.

WATERS We had about A$2.5 billion to do over this 12-month period, and one of the main drivers was an October maturity of A$1.2 billion. This was one of the first transactions Ausgrid did when it was privatised so replacing it was the source of a little concern when we started looking at it 12 months out.

It’s fair to say the banks and syndicate desks weren’t as confident about how the market would pan out at that juncture, especially with the US election in the second half.

On this basis, we started pre-funding the 2024 maturities in 2023, split between the bank market and the domestic bond market. As conditions improved over the year, we did another Australian dollar transaction in Q2. When we went to market, conditions in The lead up to the transaction were much stronger than we had anticipated. This enabled us to bring a bit of funding forward by upsizing the deal.

Since then, we have been surprised at the strength of the Australian market. We have subsequently had a lot of reverse enquiry interest and we have tapped the newest bond line three times in response to this interest.

SHEDDEN I am new to the job but I can discuss what Endeavour Energy has done in the past year. The business accessed the domestic market in 2023 for what was, at the time, its largest domestic deal.

After exploring markets in 2024, Endeavour started in USPP format, which at the time provided the most competitive cost of funds back to Australian dollars and best matched our funding objectives on volume, maturity and pricing.

With strong investor appetite, Endeavour was the first Australian issuer to use the multicurrency tranche offering, which enabled us to take advantage of favourable swap pricing conditions and target a new and diverse global investor base. This resulted in upsizing from the initial US$400 million to close at about US$715 million equivalent.

This started the year well, with more volume and longer tenor than originally planned. The follow-up transaction in H2 was in the Asian term loan (ATL) market, refinancing Endeavour’s first ATL that was issued in 2017 and due to mature in 2025. The business wanted to retain this investor base, and pricing was looking extremely favourable.

The new deal launched at A$500 million but, again, the depth of demand was so strong that it upsized to close to A$1 billion, across seven and 10 years. We understand the pricing was the tightest of any ATL in 2024 on a tenor-adjusted basis, while achieving 30 per cent of volume taken up by investors that are new to Endeavour.

GRAHAM I am also relatively new to the role – I started in February. VPN [Victoria Power Networks] and UE [United Energy] had about A$2 billion to raise combined, with a weighting toward VPN as our larger borrower.

A key focus of our 2024 funding strategy was to re-engage our core markets with new supply and refresh our secondary curve domestically as it had become relatively stale. VPN hadn’t issued a public benchmark domestic deal for three years and it had been around five years since VPN and UE last issued in the USPP market.

As for bringing our issuance plans forward, this happened at the margin but not significantly. The domestic market was pretty strong and did a pretty good transaction for VPN straight out of the gate in Q1 2024. In May, we priced USPP transactions concurrently for VPN and UE. The UE one was brought forward a little given it was refinancing a large maturity later in the year. We thought there was a strong rationale for pricing both deals together.

Since we priced the USPP transactions, in May, the swapped-back pricing for Australian dollar funders bringing back US dollars has moved significantly wider – around 15-20 basis points – which further justifies the decision to price the two trades together.

VAN DER GEEST Telstra had bank debt and bond refinancing to be completed in the year: we were working on a requirement of A$3 billion for 2024. A key for us was to highlight that the domestic market is our home market, with desired preference for volume.

We completed a dual-tranche transaction, in seven and 10 years but weighted to the long end. We targeted marketing through Asia, updating on the business and providing clarity on our funding objectives. Asian demand was strong and provided momentum – it was a stronghold in that transaction.

The trend in the second half was acceleration ahead of the election cycle in the US, to close out our funding needs. We took a slightly different strategy, issuing a longer-dated – 12-year – deal in Europe and then a shorter-dated, smaller Australian transaction.

TRIGONA We raised A$5.5 billion in 2024 and it was a strong environment for accessing funds. We issued a six- and 10-year euro transaction in March, for which the demand was incredible. There was a book of A$10 billion equivalent at peak.

The bonds were well supported by European investors given the green-bond format but there was demand from across the globe – even from central banks and sovereign wealth funds.

Following our financial year update, we went back to the Australian dollar market to raise A$1.75 billion in seven years and a three-year floating-rate note. We contemplated issuing a 10-year transaction and we were certainly conscious of the success of issuers like Telstra at this tenor. But we decided on the seven-year because we had strong investor interest at this tenor and we thought it would drop out at 10 years.

We completed our issuance for the year in late September with another transaction in the US market – again, trying to get in before the US election. We raised US$1 billion in two tranches, and we were very particular about capping the transaction at US$500 million in each. The strategy was to tighten our spreads and we told investors the deals would be capped.

Central bank participation, again, was very high: 25 per cent of the five-year orders. The other notable outcome of the US transaction is that we received some very significant orders from key asset managers. The investor base understands our story and large tickets are now coming into our transactions.