C$5 billion. That is the size of the Canadian dollar note sale Walmart Inc. (WMT) priced on October 19, alongside $3 billion of U.S. dollar notes, according to an 8-K the retailer filed on Friday. The filing gives no reason for the borrowing.

Both offerings were set to close on October 23. The notes fall under Walmart's 2005 indenture, with The Bank of New York Mellon Trust Company as successor trustee, the filing said.

The eight tranches, as listed in the filing:

• $750 million of 5.050% notes due 2029, priced at 99.994% of face value.
• $500 million of 5.150% notes due 2031, priced at 99.800%.
• $1 billion of 5.350% notes due 2033, priced at 99.873%.
• $750 million of 5.550% notes due 2036, priced at 99.780%.
• C$750 million of 4.150% notes due 2030 and C$2 billion of 4.450% notes due 2033.
• C$1.75 billion of 4.950% notes due 2038 and C$500 million of 5.250% notes due 2056.
• Net proceeds of $2.985 billion from the U.S. sale and C$4.979 billion from the Canadian sale.

Interest bill on the new notes

The U.S. tranches carry a weighted average coupon of about 5.29%, or roughly $159 million of interest a year, as calculated by Trend & Ticker.

The Canadian notes average about 4.66%, about C$233 million a year, as calculated by Trend & Ticker. That gap of more than half a percentage point applies even though the Canadian package reaches out to 2056.

The difference between the public offering price and net proceeds comes to about $11 million in the U.S. sale and about C$19 million in Canada, as calculated by Trend & Ticker.

Set against a $50 billion debt load

Walmart carried about $50.4 billion of debt and $11.5 billion of cash at the end of its fiscal second quarter in July, its filings show. The U.S. notes alone equal about 6% of that debt, as calculated by Trend & Ticker.

In the first half of its fiscal year, through July, Walmart reported $5.5 billion of free cash flow (cash from operations minus payments for property and equipment), down $1.4 billion from a year earlier, its second-quarter release said.

The shortest U.S. tranche comes due in 2029, while the 2056 Canadian notes run three decades, the longest in either sale.