The short version
The Republic of Mozambique has one live bond in our set: the 9.0% due 15 September 2031, a US dollar borrowing of US$900m with the Reg S identifier XS2051203862. Reg S refers to the rules under which a bond is sold to investors outside the United States; an ISIN is simply the international code that identifies one specific bond line.
Three things about it are easy to get wrong. The first is the coupon. The 9% figure has not applied for the whole life of the bond — the rate started at 5% and stepped up to 9% on 15 September 2023. That change is in the past, so 9% is the rate that applies now and for every remaining period.
The second is repayment. This bond is amortising, meaning the amount borrowed comes back in slices on a schedule rather than in one lump sum on the maturity date. The single-payment arrangement most people picture is called a bullet. Here, principal starts being repaid in 2028, so "2031" is only the date of the last instalment.
The third is the gas. A payment linked to future liquefied natural gas revenue was proposed for this restructuring and then dropped from the final deal. It does not exist as an instrument, and nothing attached to this bond pays out if Mozambique's gas revenues arrive. That is set out in full below, because it is the point on which readers are most often mistaken.
Where this bond came from
Most bonds begin life when a government decides to borrow and sells a new bond to investors for cash. This one did not. Our tracker records a chain of three steps, and the order matters.
The chain starts in 2016, with what our tracker calls the EMATUM "tuna bond" restructuring. A restructuring is what happens when a borrower cannot meet the terms it originally agreed and the terms are rewritten instead — usually by cancelling the old debt and issuing something new in its place. That 2016 step produced a government bond carrying a 10.5% coupon and a 2023 maturity.
The second step is October 2019, when that 10.5% note due 2023 was put through an exchange — an offer to holders to hand in the bond they own and receive a different one, on different terms, in return. The bond they received is the 9.0% due 2031 on this page. It is the third link in the chain, not a fresh borrowing.
That is as far as our tracker goes, and so it is as far as this page goes. It names the 2016 step as the EMATUM "tuna bond" restructuring and puts the phrase in quotation marks, but it does not set out where the name came from or what preceded 2016. We are not filling that in from memory. What the record supports is the lineage itself: a 2016 restructuring, a 10.5% note due 2023, a 2019 exchange, and today's 9.0% due 2031.
The practical consequence is that the number on the front of this bond tells you very little about it. Its coupon, its size and its repayment shape were all set by a negotiation, not by a normal sale, and they can only be read off the documents that came out of that negotiation.
The step-up, and why it is already behind us
A step-up is a coupon that changes to a pre-agreed higher rate on a pre-agreed date, written into the bond from the start. Nobody decides at the time whether it happens; it is automatic. The opposite, and the more common arrangement, is a fixed coupon that never moves.
Mozambique's 2031 was issued with a 5.0% coupon which stepped up to 9.0% on 15 September 2023. Both the rates and the date are confirmed in our tracker. Because that date has passed, there is nothing left to anticipate: the bond now behaves like an ordinary fixed-rate bond paying 9.0%, and every remaining interest period is at 9.0%. We hold no schedule of future coupon changes for it, because there are none — the step is recorded only as a note on the bond's history.
Our tracker also records the reason this matters, and it is not a flattering one. It describes the 9% as having been "timed to gas that didn't materialise", and notes that the coupon stepped up automatically regardless. The higher rate arrived on schedule whether or not the revenue it was designed around did.
The gas-linked instrument that was dropped
A value recovery instrument is a security that pays holders extra only if some agreed measure turns out well — often a commodity price, an export volume, or, as here, a stream of government revenue. It is a way of saying: take less now, and share in the upside if it comes.
One was designed for Mozambique. Our tracker records that the 2018 proposal contained a gas-linked value recovery instrument paying 5% of the fiscal revenue from the Area 1 and Area 4 LNG projects, capped at US$500m. LNG is liquefied natural gas; the fiscal revenue is the government's own take from those projects.
It was dropped in the final 2019 deal. In its place came the automatic step-up to 9% described above. Our tracker is explicit that there is no separate contingent instrument attached to XS2051203862 — there is nothing to hold, nothing to value and nothing to exclude from our set. If you have read that Mozambique's restructuring gave investors a share of its gas revenue, that describes the proposal, not the terms that were agreed.
The one live bond
The bond is in US dollars and pays interest twice a year, on 15 March and 15 September. Its day count convention — the market rule for working out how much interest has built up between two dates — is recorded as 30E/360, which treats every month as 30 days and every year as 360. Our tracker carries that as market convention rather than a confirmed term, so it is tagged inferred below.
9.0% due 15 September 2031
Mozambique's only live line. It was created by the October 2019 exchange of the 10.5% note due 2023, and it carries the higher, post-step-up coupon of 9.0%.
Principal comes back in instalments beginning in 2028; none has been repaid yet, so the full US$900m is still outstanding. There is no payment-in-kind feature, which some restructured bonds have — see the note below.
- Currency
- US dollars confirmed
- Coupon
- 9.0%, fixed at that rate for the rest of the bond's life confirmedIt began at 5.0% and stepped up to 9.0% on 15 September 2023; that step has already happened confirmed
- Final maturity
- 15 September 2031 confirmed
- Amount issued
- US$900m confirmed
- Repayment
- Instalments from 2028, recorded as roughly US$250m a year confirmedWe assume four equal quarters of the principal on 15 September 2028, 2029, 2030 and 2031; the split is our inference and could instead be semi-annual inferred
- Interest dates
- 15 March and 15 September confirmed
- Day count
- 30E/360 inferred
- Issue / settlement
- Around 30 September 2019 stated as approximateWhether the bond is dated from 15 or 30 September 2019 is not confirmed inferred
- 144A twin
- None found in public records confirmed
No interest is rolled into the principal
Some bonds that come out of restructurings allow unpaid interest to be added to the amount owed instead of being paid in cash — a feature usually written as payment in kind, or PIK, or described as capitalising interest. It makes the debt grow rather than requiring cash out of the door.
Our tracker records that this bond has no PIK and no capitalisation. The 9.0% is paid in cash on each interest date, and the amount owed does not grow.
What we are not sure about
Our tracker keeps its own list of terms that are inferred rather than read off a document, together with one internal discrepancy we have not resolved. All of it is repeated here rather than smoothed over.
How the principal splits between instalments is inferred
That the bond amortises from 2028 is confirmed. How the principal divides between payment dates is not. We carry an assumption of four equal instalments of 25% each, on 15 September 2028, 2029, 2030 and 2031, and our tracker flags it explicitly as inferred — noting that the schedule could instead be semi-annual, with eight smaller payments rather than four.
The total repaid is not in question; only its shape between now and 2031. Our tracker holds this open until it can be locked down against the 2019 Exchange Offer Memorandum, the document produced for the exchange that created this bond. Anything tagged inferred on this page sits in that category.
Two of our own figures do not quite agree
Our tracker records the amortisation two ways in the same line. It gives it as roughly US$250m a year from 2028, and separately as four equal instalments of 25% of the bond. Four equal quarters of a US$900m bond would be US$225m each, not US$250m.
We are not choosing between them here. The rounded annual figure is carried as confirmed and the equal-quarters split as inferred, and the gap between the two is one more reason the exchange memorandum is on our list to obtain.
The exact dated date is unconfirmed
The bond settled around 30 September 2019, but whether interest is calculated from 15 September or 30 September 2019 — the dated date — is not confirmed in the public record we hold. It is on the same list to be locked down from the 2019 Exchange Offer Memorandum.
The day count is convention, not a confirmed term
We show 30E/360 because it is the usual convention for a bond of this kind, not because we have read it in the bond's own documentation. It is flagged as inferred in our tracker and tagged accordingly above.
No 144A identifier was found
Large dollar bonds are often sold in two parallel tranches with separate identification codes — a Reg S tranche for investors outside the United States and a 144A tranche for certain US institutions. They are the same borrowing, but each carries its own ISIN.
For this bond we found only the Reg S code, XS2051203862. Our tracker records that no 144A identifier could be found publicly. That is a statement about what the public record showed us, not a statement that no such tranche exists.
Where every figure here comes from
Every term on this page traces to a public record. Our tracker names its sources without giving web addresses for them, so we cite them in words rather than linking.
| What it tells us | Source |
|---|---|
| The 5% to 9% step-up, the 2031 maturity, the amortising structure and the dropping of the gas-linked instrument | Coverage of the 2019 exchange in Reuters/IFR, Zitamar and FurtherAfrica |
| The coupon structure | UN/OSAA, "The Allure of Commercial Debt: Zambia and Mozambique", together with IMF debt sustainability analyses |
| The Reg S ISIN and the bond's existence as a listed line | The public exchange listing (Euronext Dublin / LSE), corroborated by the identifiers FIGI BBG00QQDB459 and WKN A2R97P |
| The four-way instalment split and the precise dated date | Not from a document — these are our own assumptions, flagged as inferred above, and held open until the 2019 Exchange Offer Memorandum can be obtained |
How we work out the price
Nothing on this page is a price. Terms change rarely — a coupon, a maturity date and a repayment schedule are fixed when the bond is sold — so a reference page can state them once and stand. Prices change all day, so they live on the price page and only there. If a figure here ever disagrees with one there, this page is the one to distrust, and we would like to hear about it.
What the two have to do with each other is this. On a normal trading day a closing quote for these bonds reaches us from the market, and that anchors what the price page shows. Between closes the price moves with the things that move this market: US Treasury yields, how much extra return investors demand for African sovereign risk, market volatility and, for commodity exporters, commodity prices. Where a bond repays in instalments rather than in one go, the calculation also has to know how much of it is left on any given day — which is what the repayment schedules above are for. Get a schedule wrong and the published price is wrong.
Information only. This page is general educational material about how this market works. Nothing here is investment, financial, legal or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Prices shown elsewhere on this site are indicative and are not an offer to trade.
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