Texas, NYC Offerings on the Horizon

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The Texas Department of Transportation will lead the week's new-issue activity with a $900 million sale of general obligation mobility-fund refunding bonds as volume in the municipal market is projected to stay above $6 billion for a third straight week.

Figures from Ipreo LLC and The Bond Buyer show that an estimated $6.42 billion in long-term new issuance is headed for the primary market this week.

That follows $9.29 billion that came to market last week, according to Thomson Reuters.

Last week's largest deal, the four-part Los Angeles Unified School District GO issue, was downsized to $1.6 billion from a scheduled $1.7 billion last Thursday, as muni experts said yields were too low to attract some investors.

Earlier in the week, New York City increased the size of its GO offering by $170 million to $1.02 billion.

Overall, traders described the market on Friday as quiet and flat.

"New issues did pretty well, but there is still a lot of June money out there," a New York trader said on Friday. "A lot of June money is not being placed because yields are so low and so unattractive."

Uncertainty over interest rates is also keeping some investors on the sidelines, despite some healthier issuance that surfaced this week, such as the Los Angeles. school deal.

"It seems we're just stuck here with interest rates in this range," the trader said. "Even though we had a lot of deals this week, I don't see a lot of deals coming and we still have supply problems."

Nevertheless, a handful of deals of $500 million or more are expected to reach the market this week, led by the Texas deal and several financings from New York municipalities.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch will price the Texas deal on Wednesday with triple-A ratings from all three major rating agencies, though the structure of the offering was not yet determined at press time.

A $590 million sale of tax anticipation notes from Oregon is planned for pricing on Tuesday by Citi. The one-year notes are rated MIG-1 by Moody's Investors Service, SP1-plus by Standard & Poor's and F1-plus by Fitch Ratings.

Meanwhile, a trio of large transportation-related financings and a housing deal are on the calendar, the largest of which is $555 million of sales-tax receipt revenue bonds from the Chicago Transit Authority.

Slated for pricing on Wednesday by Loop Capital Markets, the deal is rated AA by S&P and also has an AA rating from Kroll Bond Rating Agency.

New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority is gearing up to issue $500 million of revenue bonds in a deal led by Jefferies LLC.

The deal, rated A2 by Moody's, A-plus by S&P and A by Fitch, will be offered to retail investors on Wednesday ahead of the official pricing on Thursday.

The New York City Housing Development Corp. will make an appearance with $316.95 million of multifamily housing revenue bonds in a structure that includes fixed-rate tax-exempt paper, index floating-rate taxable bonds and term-rate securities.

Priced by JPMorgan Securities, the bonds are rated Aa2 by Moody's and AA by Standard & Poor's. The structure was still being finalized and not available on Friday.

Additionally, a $400 million sale of consolidated bonds is on tap from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The deal, which is structured with serial bonds maturing from 2025 to 2034, is

on tap in the competitive market on Tuesday.

Meanwhile in the southeast, Georgia prices $978 million of taxable and tax exempt general obligation bonds on Tuesday — the largest competitive deal of the week. The transaction is rated triple-A by all the major rating agencies.

There will be five different competitive auctions: $649.9 million of tax exempt GOs, Series A, to be auctioned in two parts; $151.1 million of taxable GOs; $13.7 million of direct-pay taxable qualified school construction GO bonds; and $162.9 million of current refunding GOs — all backed by the full faith, credit and taxing powers of the state. Taken together they represent the largest deal on next week's muni primary calendar.

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