Buyers see N.J., N.Y., Md., Calif. municipal bond deals come to market

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Buyers of municipal bonds had a variety of new issues to choose from on Wednesday as deals from New Jersey, New York, California and Maryland all came to market.

Traders were giddy with excitement ahead of the pricing of the $3.2 billion New Jersey tobacco deal on Wednesday as it helped boost supply and get some investors out of the woodwork, according to a New York manager.

“Supply has picked up this week and everyone is gauging for it,” he said. “We’re all waiting for the N.J. tobacco deal.” He expected appetite to surface and for the deal to be “pretty well received” even though it is mostly single-A rated except for the 2047 maturity, which is triple-B rated.

Some will “look beyond the rating” and take advantage of the behemoth deal that dominates the market this week, he noted. Even though he described the overall tobacco sector as “hairy” and said the state of New Jersey has had some “hiccoughs” lately, it will see demand at the right price.

“You’re going to get people to buy it that don’t usually buy [New Jersey paper] just because of the yield and some fund guys that desperately need the paper will buy it for the yield pick up,” he said.

Primary market
Jefferies priced the New Jersey Tobacco Settlement Financing Corp.’s Series 2018A senior and Series 2018B subordinate tobacco settlement bonds for institutions after holding a one-day retail order period.

Siebert Cisneros Shank priced the New York City Municipal Water Finance Authority’s $426.14 million of Fiscal 2018 Series EE water and sewer system second resolution revenue bonds for institutions after holding a one-day retail order period.

Citigroup priced the San Diego County Regional Transportation Commission’s $537.48 million of Series 2018A subordinate sales tax revenue short-term notes.

In the competitive arena on Wednesday, Howard County, Md., sold $131.3 million of Series 2018A consolidated public improvement project tax-exempt bonds.

Citigroup won the bonds with a true interest cost of 3.0611%.

Since 2008, the county has sold about $2.45 billion of bonds with the most issuance in that time occurring in 2017 when it sold $644.6 million of debt. The county sold the least amount of bonds in that period in 2012 when is offered only $57.3 million of securities.

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Late Tuesday, the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois announced it was postponing Wednesday’s sale of Series 2018A and 2018B auxiliary facilities system revenue bonds while it “considers a change in accounting principles brought about by the adoption of GASB Statement 75. In recent days, the university learned that its interpretation of GASB 75, affecting fiscal year 2018 reporting and forward, varied from that of the State of Illinois Comptroller's Office. After the board has reviewed, analyzed and adopted any required changes in accounting principles, it intends to resume the sale of the bonds.”

Wednesday’s bond offerings

New Jersey:
Click here for Tobacco Settlement Financing Corp. institutional deal

Click here for Tobacco Settlement Financing Corp. retail deal

New York:
Click here for the NYC Water deal

Click here for the NYC Water retail deal

California:
Click here for the San Diego deal

Click here for the updated San Diego premarketing wire

Click here for the San Diego premarketing wire

Maryland:
Click here for the Howard County sale

Bond Buyer 30-day visible supply at $11.05B
The Bond Buyer's 30-day visible supply calendar decreased $605.7 million to $11.05 billion on Wednesday. The total is comprised of $2.823 billion of competitive sales and $8.225 billion of negotiated deals.

Previous session's activity
The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board reported 46,280 trades on Tuesday on volume of $12.47 billion.

California, New York and Texas were the states with the most trades, with the Golden State taking 20.943% of the market, the Empire State taking 12.176% and the Lone Star State taking 8.743%.

Data appearing in this article from Municipal Bond Information Services, including the MBIS municipal bond index, is available on The Bond Buyer Data Workstation. Click here for a brief tour of the Workstation, or contact Vanessa Kim at 212-803-8474 for more information.

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