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 7 to 8 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 Covid.”
Aster is expanding across India, looking to open at least four hospitals there in the next four years. Currently, only about a fifth of the company’s revenue comes from India. Moopen wants the South Asian nation of nearly 1.4 billion people to account for about a third of the company’s business.