Feast after famine as $5.8B of bonds to go up for sale

BB-MUNIMID-021618

Buyers of municipal bonds will be more than satisfied with next week’s slate of sales — a higher than usual amount for a holiday-shortened week. The muni market will be closed on Monday for the Presidents Day holiday.

Ipreo estimates volume for next week at $5.8 billion, comprised of $4.5 billion of negotiated deals and $1.3 billion of competitive sales.

BB-021618-WEEK

Primary market
Dominating next week’s slate are two deals from opposite ends of the county.

A $1.35 billion offering is coming from the Los Angeles School District while New York City will sell almost $1 billion in bonds.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is set to price the LAUSD’s general obligation bonds consisting of Election of 2005 series 2018M-1 tax-exempts and Series 2018M-2 taxables and Election of 2008 Series 2018B-1 tax-exempts and Series 2018B-2 taxables.

The tax-exempts are rated Aa2 by Moody’s Investors Service and AAA by Fitch Ratings while the taxables are rated Aa2 by Moody’s and F1-plus by Fitch.

And Jefferies is set to price New York City’s $700 million of tax-exempt fixed-rate general obligation bonds on Thursday after a two-day retail order period.

Also on Thursday, the city will competitively sell $250 million of taxable fixed-rate bonds in two separate offerings consisting of $188.11 million and $61.89 million GOs.

Proceeds of the sale will be used to fund capital projects and to convert some outstanding floating-rate bonds into fixed-rates.

New York City is rated Aa2 by Moody’s and AA by Fitch.

Bond Buyer 30-day visible supply at $6.99B
The Bond Buyer's 30-day visible supply calendar increased $1.86 billion to $6.99 billion on Friday. The total is comprised of $2.30 billion of competitive sales and $4.69 billion of negotiated deals.

Previous session's activity
The Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board reported 47,515 trades on Thursday on volume of $13.99 billion.

California, Texas and New York were the states with the most trades, with the Golden State taking 13.639% of the market, the Lone Star State taking 10.669%, and the Empire State taking 9.551%.

Week's actively traded issues
Some of the most actively traded bonds by type in the week ended Feb. 16 were from Puerto Rico and Pennsylvania issuers, according to Markit.

In the GO bond sector, the Puerto Rico Commonwealth benchmark 8s of 2035 traded 100 times. In the revenue bond sector, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Financing Authority tobacco 4s of 2039 traded 144 times. And in the taxable bond sector, the Puerto Rico Sales Tax Financing Corp. 6.05s of 2036 traded 19 times.

Week's actively quoted issues
Puerto Rico and California names were among the most actively quoted bonds in the week ended Feb. 16, according to Markit.

On the bid side, Puerto Rico Commonwealth GO 8s of 2035 were quoted by 38 unique dealers. On the ask side, the California taxable 7.95s of 2036 were quoted by 86 dealers. And among two-sided quotes, the Puerto Rico Commonwealth GO 8s of 2035 were quoted by 22 unique dealers.

Lipper: Muni bond funds saw outflows
Investors in municipal bond funds reversed course in the latest week and pulled cash out of the funds, according to Lipper data released on Thursday.

The weekly reporters saw $443.409 million of outflows in the week of Feb. 14, after inflows of $674.908 million in the previous week.

BB-021618-LIPPER

Exchange traded funds reported outflows of $60.759 million, after inflows of $53.734 million in the previous week. Ex-ETFs, muni funds saw $382.649 million of outflows, after inflows of $621.174 million in the previous week.

The four-week moving average was positive at $312.146 million, after being in the green at $717.654 million in the previous week. A moving average is an analytical tool used to smooth out price changes by filtering out fluctuations.

Long-term muni bond funds had outflows of $102.806 million in the latest week after inflows of $36.688 million in the previous week. Intermediate-term funds had inflows of $201.425 million after inflows of $391.078 million in the prior week.

National funds had outflows of $410.442 million after inflows of $686.135 million in the previous week. High-yield muni funds reported inflows of $20.088 million in the latest week, after outflows of $572.375 million the previous week.

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.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, click here.
Primary bond market Secondary bond market Municipal bond funds State of California State of New York City of New York, NY State of Texas
MORE FROM BOND BUYER