Swisscom places € 500-million green bond

“Our inaugural green bond placement underscores our continued commitment to the environment, people and society,” explains Mario Rossi, Swisscom CFO. Projects are selected in close alignment with Swisscom’s sustainability strategy and in consideration of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), placing particular emphasis on increased energy efficiency, renewable energies, climate protection (SDGs 7 and 13) and the provision of a state-of-the-art, resilient grid infrastructure (SDG 9).

Together with its customers, Swisscom plans to reduce net CO2 emissions by 450,000 tonnes by 2025 and to increase energy efficiency by a further 25%. To achieve these goals, the link between energy consumption and continued volume growth needs to be broken. Swisscom needs to enable its customers to avoid CO2 emissions and further reduce its own CO2 emissions. Investments in new, energy-saving grid technologies, such as optical fibre expansion, 5G, innovative cooling systems, building renovations, photovoltaics and electromobility, are the key to achieving these goals.

The green bond of EUR 500 million has a coupon of 0.375 percent and a maturity of 8.5 years. Eugen Stermetz, Head of Treasury at Swisscom: “Sustainable investment options are becoming increasingly important to investors. With this green bond placement, we are responding to this need and opening up a new investor segment.” The bond will be paid up on 14 May 2020. The issue was lead-managed by Credit Suisse, BNP Paribas, LBBW and UniCredit Bank. The bond is listed on Euronext Dublin. ING advised Swisscom on the preparation of the Green Bond Framework.

Swisscom has commissioned its auditor, PwC, to verify that the allocation of funds to green projects complies with Swisscom’s Green Bond Framework.

The Green Bond Framework, the second-party opinion of Sustainalytics and the investor presentation are available online at the following links:

www.swisscom.com/en/about/investors/financing.html

www.swisscom.ch/en/about/company/sustainability.html