The last of the week’s big deals came to market on Thursday with issuers in Colorado, Pennsylvania and Florida leading the pack.
Primary market
Wells Fargo Securities priced Colorado’s $500 million of Series 2018A certificates of participation.
The deal is rated Aa2 by Moody’s Investors Service and AA-minus by S&P Global Ratings.
PNC Capital Markets priced the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission’s $180.155 million of Series of 2019 turnpike revenue refunding bonds for forward delivery with an expected settlement date of Sept. 24, 2019.
The deal is rated A1 by Moody’s, A-plus by Fitch Ratings and AA-minus by Kroll Bond Rating Agency.
In the competitive arena, Miami-Dade County, Fla., sold $225.975 million of Series 2018 transit system sales surtax revenue bonds.
Bank of America Merrill Lynch won the bonds with a true interest cost of 4.0667%.
Proceeds of the sale will be used to pay the cost of some transportation and transit projects in the county.
The financial advisor is PFM Financial Advisors; bond counsel is Hogan Lovells.
The deal is rated AA by S&P and Fitch.
Thursday’s bond sales
Colorado
Pennsylvania
Florida
NYC TFA plans $1.4B BARB sale
The New York City Transitional Finance Authority plans to sell approximately $1.4 billion of building aid revenue bonds, comprised of $1.2 billion of tax-exempt fixed rate bonds and $230 million of taxable fixed rate bonds.
Proceeds from the sale will be used to refund outstanding bonds.
The tax-exempt fixed rate bonds are expected to be priced on Wednesday, Oct. 17 through an underwriting syndicate led by book-running lead manager Ramirez & Co. and joint lead manager Citigroup, with BAML and Jefferies serving as co-senior managers. A two-day retail order period will be held beginning Monday, Oct. 15.
Also on Oct. 17, the TFA expects to competitively sell about $230 million of taxable fixed-rate bonds.
Bond Buyer 30-day visible supply at $4.88B
The Bond Buyer's 30-day visible supply calendar decreased $255.9 million to $4.88 billion for Thursday. The total is comprised of $2.23 billion of competitive sales and $2.64 billion of negotiated deals.
Muni money market funds see inflow
Tax-free municipal money market fund assets increased $271.6 million, raising their total net assets to $131.10 billion in the week ended Sept. 17, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.
The modest inflows are a slight drop from last week’s $392 million, but makes it five straight weeks of inflows, after seeing back-to-back billion-dollar outflows. The average, seven-day simple yield for the 199 tax-free reporting funds rose to 1.04% from 1.03%.
Taxable money-fund assets decreased by $25.29 billion in the week ended Sept. 18, lowering its total net assets to $2.700 trillion. The average, seven-day simple yield for the 831 taxable reporting funds nudged up to 1.62% from 1.61% last week.
Overall, the combined total net assets of the 1,030 reporting money funds declined by $25.02 billion to $2.856 trillion in the week ended Sept.18.
Secondary market
Municipal bonds were weaker on Thursday, according to a midday read of the MBIS benchmark scale. Benchmark muni yields rose three basis points in the one-year maturity, as much as two basis points in the two- to six-year maturities and less than a basis point in the seven- to 30-year maturities.
High-grade munis were mixed, with yields calculated on MBIS' AAA scale rising three basis points in the one-year maturity, rising as much as two basis points in the two- to six-year maturities, rising less than a basis point in the seven-year maturity and less than a basis point in the 10- to 25-year maturities while falling less than a basis point in the eight- and nine-year and 26- to 30-year maturities.
Municipals were steady on Municipal Market Data’s AAA benchmark scale, which showed the yield on both the 10-year muni general obligation and the yield on 30-year muni maturity remaining unchanged.
Treasury bonds were stronger as stock prices traded higher.
On Wednesday, the 10-year muni-to-Treasury ratio was calculated at 84.1% while the 30-year muni-to-Treasury ratio stood at 99.8%, according to MMD. The muni-to-Treasury ratio compares the yield of tax-exempt municipal bonds with the yield of taxable U.S. Treasury with comparable maturities. If the muni/Treasury ratio is above 100%, munis are yielding more than Treasury; if it is below 100%, munis are yielding less.
Previous session's activity
The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board reported 40,126 trades on Wednesday on volume of $12.84 billion.
California, Texas and New York were the municipalities with the most trades, with Golden State taking 14.245% of the market, the Lone Star State taking 14.079% and the Empire State taking 10.674%.
ICI: Long-term muni funds saw $30M inflow
Long-term tax-exempt municipal bond funds saw an inflow of $30 million in the week ended Sept. 12, the Investment Company Institute reported.
This followed an inflow of $4 million into the tax-exempt mutual funds in the week ended Sept. 5 and inflows of $273 million, $531 million, $662 million, $723 million, $163 million, $600 million, $1.765 billion, $1.028 billion and $356 million in the nine prior weeks.
Taxable bond funds saw an estimated inflow of $7.177 billion in the latest reporting week, after seeing an inflow of $3.515 billion in the previous week.
ICI said the total estimated inflows to long-term mutual funds and exchange-traded funds were $2.088 billion for the week ended Sept. 12 after outflows of $4.204 billion in the prior week.
Treasury announces auction details
The Treasury Department announced these auctions:
- $31 billion of seven-year notes selling on Sept. 27;
- $38 billion of five-year notes selling on Sept. 25;
- $37 billion of two-year notes selling on Sept. 24;
- $17 billion of one-year 10-month floating rate notes selling on Sept. 25;
- $42 billion of 182-day bills selling on Sept. 24; and
- $48 billion of 91-day bills selling on Sept. 24.
Gary Siegel contributed to this report.
Data appearing in this article from Municipal Bond Information Services, including the MBIS municipal bond index, is available on The Bond Buyer Data Workstation.
