Platinum Credit raises $7.48M in Uganda's first corporate bond since 2013
What's the deal? Platinum Credit (U) LimitedDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a Ugandan microfinance lender, has raised Shs30bn ($7.48 million) from the first sale of notes under a Shs70bn medium-term programme. Investors bid Shs49.28bn against a Shs20bn target — a subscription rate of 246.4% — allowing Platinum to exercise in full a Shs10bn green shoe and lift the accepted amount to Shs30bn.
The terms: The notes carry fixed coupons of 16.5% on three-year paper, 17.4% on five-year paper, and 19% on eight-year paper, paid quarterly — a weighted average of about 17.2%. That is roughly 3.7 percentage points above the 13.74% the government paid on a five-year bond at its September 23rd auction.
Why now? Uganda's corporate debt market has been dormant. The Capital Markets Authority recorded no primary or secondary corporate bond activity in the year to June 2025, blaming high government yields.
The last new corporate debt issue was Kakira SugarDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →'s Shs76bn bond in December 2013, per The EastAfrican , which counted just nine corporate bond issuers since 1998.
The details: The five-year series drew Shs30.09bn of bids, 61% of the total, but Platinum accepted only Shs13.86bn. It took all Shs13.14bn bid for the three-year series and Shs3bn of the Shs6.05bn bid for the eight-year. Applications up to Shs1.5bn were met in full; larger ones were scaled back at the issuer's discretion.
Dyer & BlairDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which acted as arranger, sponsoring broker, and placing agent, described participation as strong. The notes listed on the exchange on October 5th. Platinum did not say what it will do with the money or who bought the notes.
What's the endgame? Platinum, part of the Platcorp GroupDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, says it serves more than 100,000 clients, most of them small businesses and low-income households. The sale is Tranche 1 of the programme; the announcement does not say when the next will follow. The lender has also raised abroad — Swiss asset manager SymbioticsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → provided $4 million over 24 months, disbursed in December 2025.
For scale: The central bank accepted Shs1.2tn at its September 23rd bond auction, 40 times Platinum's raise.
The signal: The oversubscription suggests investor appetite for corporate paper remains, even as government yields crowd out issuers. Whether other borrowers can match Platinum's pricing is less clear — analysts quoted in local media questioned who would raise money at 17%. For now, Platinum has reopened a market that has sat largely idle for more than a decade.
Read more: ugbusiness.com
Image credit: Generated with Gemini
