Latest news with #sovereign
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Ukraine Bonds Rally as Trump Pressures Russia for Quick Truce
Ukrainian bonds rose the most in a month after US President Donald Trump pressured Russia's Vladimir Putin to quickly stop the war in Ukraine. The sovereign's dollar-denominated bonds maturing in 2035 and 2036 rose nearly 1.5 cents. Ukraine accounted for six out of the eight best-performing bonds in emerging markets on Monday.
Bloomberg
17-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Ivory Coast Raises $336 Million in Its First Samurai Bonds
Ivory Coast has raised 50 billion yen ($336 million) in Samurai bonds, the country's first, as it moves to diversify financing sources. The 10-year bond, which makes the world's top cocoa producer the only sub-Saharan African sovereign with a current Samurai, was issued at a coupon of 2.3%, the Finance Ministry said in a statement Thursday.
Bloomberg
15-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
S&P Cuts Senegal's Credit Rating for Second Time in Five Months
S&P Global Ratings cut Senegal's credit rating further into junk for a second time in five months, citing the West African nation's rising debt burden. Senegal's long-term foreign currency debt was cut to B- from B, the second reduction since February, to the lowest since the rating company first assessed the sovereign in 2000.
Yahoo
07-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Citi lifts Nvidia's price target on booming sovereign AI demand
Citi (C) is doubling down on Nvidia (NVDA), driven by what it sees as a major expansion in demand for AI infrastructure, particularly from sovereign governments. The firm raised its price target on the chipmaker to $190 per share, implying a roughly 15% upside from Nvidia's current trading levels. Citi analysts said they see Nvidia capturing a larger piece of an expanding total addressable market (TAM) for data center infrastructure. The upgrade comes as Nvidia continues its charge toward a $4 trillion market cap, with shares up 12% in the past month. "We believe sovereign demand is already contributing up to billions of dollars in 2025" and should ramp up further in 2026, analysts Atif Malik and Papa Sylla wrote. Nvidia is involved in "essentially every sovereign deal," the note said, making the company central to the global race to build national AI infrastructure. The firm raised its 2028 AI compute TAM estimate to $563 billion, up 13% from $500 billion, and networking TAM to $119 billion, up from $90 billion, expecting sharp sales increases for Nvidia. Citi noted that at Nvidia's recent Generative AI conference, participants discussed a possible benchmark for AI infrastructure: one supercomputer or 10,000 GPUs per 100,000 employees, a ratio that could drive massive enterprise and government buildouts. Nvidia, whose Blackwell GB200 chips power many of these AI clusters, is already seeing accelerating deployment, according to Citi. Concerns about potential bottlenecks in Nvidia's supply chain have also eased, with Citi reporting that rack buildouts are happening "at a rapid pace." As the company prepares for its next-gen GB300 chips, analysts expect a smooth transition, crediting lessons learned from earlier platform shifts. Citi now expects Nvidia's data center revenue to grow 5% in FY 2027 and 11% in FY 2028. Networking sales are projected to surge by 12% and 27%, respectively. This represents a 20% attach rate, indicating a rising demand for high-performance systems that link large AI clusters. Gross margins are also forecast to continue expanding, normalizing in the mid-70% range by year-end. Still, the bank flagged downside risks, including renewed export restrictions under a potential second Trump administration. Bloomberg recently reported that Malaysia and Thailand could face scrutiny for suspected shipments to China. For now, though, the AI gold rush — especially from public sector buyers — shows no signs of slowing. "Nvidia has line of sight to tens of gigawatts of sovereign and enterprise AI factory buildouts over the next few years," Malik and Sylla wrote. Francisco Velasquez is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. He can be reached on LinkedIn and X.
Zawya
02-07-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Moody's downgrades Afrexim on weak asset performance, shrinking funding sources
LONDON - Ratings agency Moody's has slashed its rating on Afreximbank, the embattled African lender's second downgrade in four weeks, citing weaker-than-expected asset performance and warning that its access to funding sources was shrinking. Moody's lowered the rating from Baa1 to Baa2 - two notches above a sub-investment grade or "junk" rating - and changed its outlook from negative to stable, according to a statement published late on Tuesday. "The bank's recent shift to unsecured lending to sovereigns under stress has introduced significant risks, diverging from its typical focus on trade finance, and heightened its sensitivity to its difficult operating environment," Moody's said. A lower credit rating can raise borrowing costs and in turn impact lending rates. Moody's one-notch downgrade comes as the African lender battles to protect its loans from restructuring in Ghana, Zambia and Malawi, claiming that as a multilateral lender it has preferred creditor status. "Sovereign lending to Ghana and Zambia poses capital risks, as the Common Framework mandates restructuring comparable to private-sector creditor losses," Moody's said. The downgrade also reflected a less extensive range of funding sources, which was "a trend unlikely to fully reverse", Moody's said. Afrexim historically benefitted from diversified, low-cost funding through bilateral and syndicated loans rather than market-based sources, it said. A $520 million Samurai bond sold in late 2024 and a $303 million Panda bond in early 2025 were "modest" relative to total funding needs. Moody's noted that amid the recent worsening in market conditions, Afrexim more than doubled its liquidity from end-2024 to $9.5 billion recently. "Maintaining such high levels of cash is costly and therefore unlikely," Moody's said. Moody's pointed to some mitigating factors such as strong profitability, and added that at the end of 2024, 41% of the Zambian and Ghanaian sovereign exposures had already been provisioned. "In addition to consistently strong organic earnings and capital generation, the bank has received consistent support from member shareholders, with both capital raising exercises and retained profit contributing significantly to grow equity." Fitch downgraded Afreximbank's credit rating to one notch above junk on June 4, with a negative outlook - effectively another downgrade warning. While the Fitch downgrade sent Afrexim's bonds on a slide that saw them hit around a year low in mid-June, they have since recovered. On Wednesday, the 2029 maturity was bid at 91.4 cents on the dollar, while the 2031 bond stood at 86.14 cents, according to Tradeweb data - both broadly unchanged on the day.
