According to the latest data, the total volume of bonds of agricultural companies in circulation exceeded 22 billion rubles.
Thus, the volume of these bonds today is 18% more than last year.
It is noteworthy that agricultural companies continue to actively issue bonds, despite the high rates on them associated with the strict policy of the Central Bank.
Perhaps this is due to the fact that the only alternative to issuing bonds can be obtaining bank loans, the terms of which in most cases are even more unfavorable.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that in general, the agricultural sector is not yet very well represented in the debt market, especially when compared with other sectors.
At the same time, there is a noticeable increase in the volume of bonds and an increase in the number of issuers and the number of available issues. If in 2018 there were only 5 such issues, now there are already 43.
However, analysts emphasize that this does not compare with the number of issues, for example, in the oil and gas and a number of other sectors.
In general, today the volume of the Russian debt market amounted to 31 trillion rubles, while a year ago it was about 25 trillion. This is an increase of 23% over the year.
At the same time, it turns out that 22 billion — the volume of the agro-industrial complex sector — is less than 0.1% of the total volume of all issues on the Russian market.
However, the dynamics of the placement of new issues by agro-industrial complex companies is positive.
For example, in 2024, 17 such issues were placed. Experts believe that over time, farmers may more actively enter the debt market.
Experts emphasize that companies from the agro-industrial complex sector mainly offer so-called high-yield bonds (HYB), which are characterized, first of all, by a low credit rating: BB and BBB.
At the same time, taking into account the extremely high rate of the Central Bank, the concept of risky bonds is currently being revised by investors, so all issuers with such a rating can be considered insufficiently reliable, which creates the risk of a decrease in demand for such bonds.
Nevertheless, the sector as a whole is assessed positively by investors, so issuers, as a rule, do not have to pay an additional premium for risk.
Another problem for issuers is that they have to offer investors very high coupons, on average from 18% to 27%.
Half of all issues are bonds with a fixed coupon, about a third — with a floating coupon tied to the key rate of the Central Bank, the rest are bonds with an offer, for which the rate can be revised before maturity.
