Municipal bonds were mixed around unchanged on Thursday as a big sale out of Nevada hit the screens.
Primary market
RBC Capital Markets priced the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s $500 million of Series 2018B convention center expansion revenue bonds.
Bond proceeds will fund some of the authority's phase two expansion project aimed at adding 1.4 million square feet to America's busiest convention center. The project is expected to be completed by 2021. A phase three project is also being planned.
JNA Consulting Group and Montague DeRose are co-financial advisors while Stradling is bond counsel.
The deal is rated Aa3 by Moody’s Investors Service and A-plus by S&P Global Ratings.
RBC also received the official award on the Poudre School District R-1 of Larimer County Colo.’s $375 million of Series 2018 general obligation bonds.
The deal is backed by the Colorado state intercept program and rated Aa2 by Moody’s and AA-plus by Fitch Ratings.
In the competitive arena, the Fort Mill School District No. 4 of York County, S.C., sold $100 million of Series 2018B GOs. Proceeds will be used to defray the costs of capital improvements to school district facilities.
JPMorgan Securities won the bonds with a true interest cost of 3.6259%. The sale had been delayed from Tuesday.
The financial advisor is Compass Municipal Advisors; the bond counsel is Haynsworth Sinkler.
The deal is rated Aa1 by Moody’s and AA by S&P.
Thursday’s bond sales
Nevada
Colorado
Bond Buyer 30-day visible supply at $7.77B
The Bond Buyer's 30-day visible supply calendar decreased $1.92 billion to $7.77 billion for Wednesday. The total is comprised of $2.52 billion of competitive sales and $5.25 billion of negotiated deals.
Money market funds see inflows again
Tax-free municipal money market fund assets increased $392 million, raising their total net assets to $130.83 billion in the week ended Sept. 10, according to the Money Fund Report, a service of iMoneyNet.com.
The modest inflow is a slight increase from last week’s $313.6 million and makes it four 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 dropped to 1.03% from 1.08%.
Taxable money-fund assets increased by $16.29 billion in the week ended Sept. 11, bringing its total net assets to $2.725 trillion. The average, seven-day simple yield for the 831 taxable reporting funds rose to 1.62% from 1.60% last week.
Overall, the combined total net assets of the 1,030 reporting money funds increased by $16.69 billion to $2.856 trillion in the week ended Sept.11.
Secondary market
Municipal bonds were mostly weaker on Thursday, according to a midday read of the MBIS benchmark scale. Benchmark muni yields rose less than one basis point in the one- to six-year and 16- to 30-year maturities, fell less than a basis point in the eight- to 14-year maturities and remained unchanged in the seven-year and 15-year maturities.
High-grade munis were mixed, with yields calculated on MBIS' AAA scale rising less than one basis point in the one- to five-year maturities, falling less than a basis point in the seven- to 18-year, 20- and 21-year and 25-year maturities and remaining unchanged in the six-year, 19-year, 22- to 24-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 85.4% while the 30-year muni-to-Treasury ratio stood at 101.1%, 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 40,516 trades on Tuesday on volume of $9.82 billion.
California, Texas and New York were the municipalities with the most trades, with Golden State taking 14.352% of the market, the Lone Star State taking 13.435% and the Empire State taking 11.478%.
ICI: Long-term muni funds saw $4M inflow
Long-term tax-exempt municipal bond funds saw an inflow of $4 million in the week ended Sept. 5, the Investment Company Institute reported.
This followed an inflow of $273 million into the tax-exempt mutual funds in the week ended Aug. 29 and inflows of $531 million, $662 million, $723 million, $163 million, $600 million, $1.765 billion, $1.028 billion, $356 million and $525 million in the nine prior weeks.
Taxable bond funds saw an estimated inflow of $3.524 billion in the latest reporting week, after seeing an inflow of $4.141 billion in the previous week.
ICI said the total estimated outflows to long-term mutual funds and exchange-traded funds were $4.184 billion for the week ended Sept. 5 after inflows of $2.071 billion in the prior week.
Treasury announces auction details
The Treasury department on Thursday announced details of its upcoming auctions:
- $23 billion of nine-year 10-month 3/4% TIPs selling on Sept. 20;
- $42 billion of 182-day bills selling on Sept. 17; and
- $48 billion of 91-day bills selling on Sept. 17.
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.
