Health chain Aster plans $400 million bond, India expansion | Markets – Gulf News
Aster DM Healthcare Ltd., a Dubai-based operator of hospitals and pharmacies that's expanding across India, is revisiting a potential sale of dollar bonds after pushing back a planned issuance last year.
Aster, which runs 26 hospitals and hundreds of clinics and pharmacies in the Gulf and India, will seek to issue about $400 million of securities possibly in the next three to six months, according to Chairman Azad Moopen. The notes would mature in seven to eight years, and would retire and replace existing debt.
"We have started discussion with the bankers regarding the bond issue," Moopen, 68, said in an interview. The firm decided not to go ahead with the sale early last year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, he said.
Aster is expanding across India, looking to open at least four hospitals there in the next four years. Moopen wants the South Asian nation of nearly 1.4 billion people to account for about a third of the company's business, up from a fifth at present. Growth will come from pent-up desire for quality medical services, he said, calling it a "huge demand-supply gap" .
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