Florida

A combination of a "stronger-than-expected economy, higher Treasury rates, robust supply, and rich valuations resulting in choppy markets" have made the trading environment in H124 "quite difficult," according to Barclays.

Friday price talk for the unrated tax-exempt paper was between 11% and 15%.

The finance team is "marketing slices of risk" to raise money to refinance its debt, investors said.

April continues to be "harsh" for munis as the asset class has given up roughly 72 basis points in the first two weeks of the month, said Jason Wong, vice president of municipals at AmeriVet Securities.

"We were originally thinking that we would offer five-, seven- and 10-year maturities, with $500 million in each tranche. But we decided today to just offer 5s and 10s — $500 million of five-year bonds and $1 billion of 10-year bonds," said Ben Watkins, Director of Florida's Bond Division.

The deal comes amid market inflows and a dearth of high-yield supply, but demand will depend, as always, on the price, investors said.

Since war broke out on Oct. 7 between Israel and Hamas, over $1.64 billion of Israel bonds have been sold to more than 35 U.S. states, counties, cities and municipalities.

Instead of her original proposal, Miami-Dade County Mayor Levine Cava said she will work toward crafting an even larger bonding plan that will also include money for transit projects.

"Now that the first phase of Miami Worldcenter is complete and the second phase is underway, our team is issuing bonds backed by the TIF package, which will help defray the cost of the improvements made in the district," the development team said.

The Fortress Investment Group-backed Brightline now anticipates carrying 4.9 million passengers between Miami and the Orlando airport.

Separately, Fitch raised Orlando's $159.87 million of Series 2017A senior tourist development tax revenue bonds, 6th-cent contract payments, to A from BBB.

Since Gov. Ron DeSantis took office in 2019, Florida has paid down $5.3 billion of state debt, or about 25% of the Sunshine State's total debt.

Six financial institutions may be placed on West Virginia's restricted list if they are found "boycott" the fossil fuel industry, Riley Moore said.

Extreme weather could aggravate growing property insurance pressures on governments.

Based in New York City, Ted Hynes has almost 40 years of experience in the fixed-income markets, the last 15 at Raymond James.

U.S. DOT Deputy Secretary Polly Trottenberg traveled to Miami-Dade County to highlight the $27 million of funding provided under the bipartisan infrastructure law to Miami International Airport's improvement projects.

Natural gas prepayment deals helped drive the utilities sector to top the Southeast in an overall down year for municipal bond sales across the region.

Robert Poole, a leading expert in the U.S. public-private partnership transportation sector, joins infrastructure reporter Caitlin Devitt to talk about upcoming deals including toll lanes and bridges in the Southeast and high speed rail in the West as well as states that are advancing P3s and action on the federal front. (37 minutes)

"We're going to be opportunistic based on what the market conditions are and what the interest rate environment is," said Ben Watkins, director of the Florida Division of Bond Finance. "We like to be like Boy Scouts — we always want to be prepared."

Issuance for the month is slightly above the $27.666 billion 10-year average, according to LSEG Refinitiv data.