Las Vegas water agency wants to highlight disclosure with investor website

A Las Vegas-area water district and water authority launched a new investor website ahead the competitive sale of $83.8 million in limited tax general obligation bonds.

The Las Vegas Valley Water District is refunding 2008 bonds with debt that is additionally secured by the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

The finance team is comprised of PFM Financial Advisors and Hobbs Ong & Associates as financial advisors, Sherman and Howard as bond counsel and Stradling, Yocca, Carlson & Rauth as disclosure counsel. The deal is slated for Tuesday.

Colin MacNaught, CEO of BondLink.
Colin MacNaught's BondLink, a nascent start-up tech firm just eight years ago designed to bring more transparency to the municipal bond markets, has grown to serving issuers in 45 states.

The website was created by BondLink, a company founded in 2016 by Colin MacNaught, chief executive officer, and Carl Query, chief technology officer. MacNaught is the former deputy treasurer of Massachusetts.

The technology enables issuers to provide more detailed disclosure on a more frequent basis to issuers, MacNaught said.

The site includes more than 5,000 pages of documents including information on the credit fundamentals behind the water district’s Aa1/AA-plus ratings. It has specifics on infrastructure projects and conservation efforts.

The long-term goal of the platform is to “attract a broader market, including retail investors, local banks and wealth managers” to the bond program in order to “increase distribution and diversity its investor base,” according to a BondLink release.

“This reflects our commitment to transparency and openness with investors, the public and our ratepayers,” said Brian Thomas, chief financial officer for both the water district and water authority.

The idea behind BondLink is to provide investors with more frequent updates on the issuer and more detailed information than what they could find on the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s EMMA website. It also provides investors a way to communicate with the issuer.

“Investors have told us they want to see regular cash reports and information on revenues, not just audited financials from six months ago,” MacNaught said. “It makes information that issuers regularly provide to taxpayers available to investors.”

The water district is a government water supply agency that provides water to 1.4 million people in most of Clark County. The water district oversees the water authority, which was formed in 1991 to manage Southern Nevada’s water needs on a regional basis.

BondLink has created several new website over the past several months. It launched one for the State of California last week and another for Silicon Valley Clean Water, a wastewater conveyance system.

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