Telecom Ramblings

Telecommunications equipment provider Ciena (NASDAQ:CIEN - chart, news) has raised $375M in convertible notes due 2015.  They will be using the proceeds to pay for their acquisition of Nortel’s MEN unit.  The credit markets seem to have looked favorably on the offer, which began at $250M.  The notes priced at an interest rate of 4% and are convertible at $20.38 – a premium of 35% to the current stock price.

$243.8M will be used to replace the convertibles they originally proposed to issue directly as part of the deal.  The remainder will go toward funding cash portion, and reduces the hit to the company’s cash position from the acquisition to about $400M.  That should leave them with about $600M on hand, which seems like enough of a cushion right now to me.  So it seems that all systems are go for this deal to close in a few weeks.