Rakuten priced ¥400B ($2.5B) of yen bonds on Friday, its largest yen bond sale, with ¥360B going to retail investors. The 5.5-year debt carries a 4.37% coupon. Japanese companies have sold about ¥3.2T of retail bonds this year, already above 2025’s record.
Rakuten Group has priced ¥400B (about $2.5B) of yen bonds, its largest yen bond sale to date, Bloomberg reported on Friday. Individual investors bought ¥360B of the debt, while institutions took the remaining ¥40B.
The 5.5-year bonds carry a 4.37% coupon. They were priced 200 basis points, or two percentage points, above the benchmark 10-year Japanese government bond.
Daiwa Securities, which led the sale, said big investors were first offered the bonds at 170 to 180 basis points over government bonds. The final spread was wider because many companies are selling bonds and spreads in the wider market have grown. Final demand was about 1.3 times the issue size, Daiwa told Bloomberg.
Retail investors can apply for the bonds from 19 to 28 October through brokers including SMBC Nikko Securities. The debt matures in April 2032.
The sale follows SoftBank Group’s ¥1T retail bond, the largest ever sold to individuals in Japan. SoftBank set a 4.75% coupon on that seven-year bond in September.
Japanese companies have sold about ¥3.2T of yen retail bonds so far in 2026, including Rakuten’s deal, according to Bloomberg data. That is already more than 15% above the record set in 2025.
“Households are beginning to recognize the appeal of corporate bonds as inflation erodes the value of cash and deposits,” Toshiyasu Ohashi, a visiting professor at Chiba University of Commerce, told Bloomberg.
Rakuten returned to profit in the April to June quarter for the first time in six years. Still, its mobile business lost ¥33.1B in that period.
The company also faces large debt repayments from 2027, including a $1.8B dollar bond due that February, according to its investor relations page. Rakuten has said it will cover its funding needs through bond sales in Japan and abroad and by raising money from its assets, Bloomberg reported.
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