Calif. sells $636M of GOs; municipal bonds strengthen

Municipal bonds were stronger at midday as the state of California competitively sold $636 million of general obligation bonds on Wednesday.

Primary market
Wells Fargo Securities won California’s $635.59 million of various purpose GO refunding bonds with a true interest cost of 2.81%.

The issue was priced to yield from 0.81% with a 5% coupon in 2017 to 2.66% with a 5% coupon in 2030. The deal is rated Aa3 by Moody’s Investors Service and AA-minus by S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings.

The Arcadia Unified School District, Calif., competitively sold $188.9 million of Series 2017 GO refunding bonds. Bank of America Merrill Lynch won the bonds with a TIC of 3.68%.

The issue was priced to yield from 0.85% with a 2% coupon in 2017 to 3.58% with a 4% coupon in 2046. The deal is rated Aa1 by Moody’s and AA by S&P.

Morgan Stanley is scheduled to price the city of Cape Coral, Fla.’s $103.4 million of utility improvement refunding assessment bonds for various areas.

The deal is rated A2 by Moody’s and BBB-plus by S&P.

BB-041317-MUN

Since 2007, Cape Coral has issued $872 million, with the most issuance occurring back in 2011 when it sold $299 million. The city did not come to market at all in 2008, 2011 through 2014 and 2016.

Siebert Cisneros Shank & Co. is slated to price the Fort Bend Independent School District, Texas' $92 million of unlimited tax refunding and green bonds.

The deal, backed by the Permanent School Fund guarantee program, is rated triple-A by S&P and Fitch.

JPMorgan Securities received the written award on Energy Northwest’s $587.79 million of electric revenue refunding tax-exempt and taxable bonds.

The $238.07 million of Series 2017A Project 1 electric revenue refunding bonds were priced as 5s to yield 2.28% and 1.81% in a split 2026 maturity, 2.49% in 2027 and 2.49% and 1.89% in a split 2028 maturity. The $188.13 million of Series 2017A Columbia Generating Station electric revenue refunding bonds were priced to yield 0.90% with a 5% coupon in 2018 and to yield from 1.43% with a 4% coupon in 2021 to 1.98% with a 5% coupon in 2024, and to yield 2.58% with a 5% coupon in 2029 and to yield from 2.95% with a 5% coupon in 2033 to 3.00% with a 5% coupon in 2035.

The $154.44 million of Series 2017A Project 3 electric revenue refunding bonds were priced as 5s to yield 0.90% in 2018, 2.16% in 2025 and 2.49% in 2028.

The $1.730 million of Series 2017B Project 1 taxable electric revenue refunding bonds were priced at par to yield 2.895% in 2020 and 2.943% in 2025.

The $3.8 million of Series 2017B Columbia Generating Station taxable electric revenue refunding bonds at par to yield 1.895% in 2020 and 3.389% in 2029.

The $1.660 million of Series 2017B Project 3 taxable electric revenue refunding bonds were priced at par to yield 1.895% in 2020 and 2.943% in 2025.

The deal is rated Aa1 by Moody’s, AA-minus by S&P and AA by Fitch.

There are only a handful of competitive sales and no negotiated deals slated for Thursday ahead of Friday’s market close.

Bond Buyer visible supply
The Bond Buyer's 30-day visible supply calendar decreased $2.053 million to $9.94 billion on Wednesday. The total is comprised of $4.60 billion of competitive sales and $5.34 billion of negotiated deals.

Secondary market
On Wednesday, the yield on the 10-year benchmark muni general obligation fell as much as one basis point from 2.13% on Tuesday, while the 30-year GO yield was down as much as one basis point from 2.94%, according to a read of Municipal Market Data's triple-A scale.

U.S. Treasuries were narrowly mixed on Wednesday. The yield on the two-year Treasury was unchanged from 1.23% on Tuesday, while the 10-year Treasury yield dropped to 2.28% from 2.30%, and the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond decreased to 2.92% from 2.93%.

On Tuesday, the 10-year muni to Treasury ratio was calculated at 92.6% compared to 91.9% on Monday, while the 30-year muni to Treasury ratio stood at 100.3%, versus 99.3%, according to MMD.

MSRB: Previous session's activity
The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board reported 40,037 trades on Tuesday on volume of $10.03 billion.

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Primary bond market Secondary markets California
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