Taxable bonds

Panelists at the NFMA 2022 annual conference said they aren’t holding out for advance refunding to be reinstated anytime soon.

Assuming the taxable and tax-exempt rates are highly correlated (and in fact they are), we can show that the expected cost of a fairly priced callable bond exceeds that of an optionless bond.

New York Dormitory Authority school bonds and Northwell Health priced and upsized, while Wisconsin and Oregon offered general obligation bonds. Analysts say municipal curves are oversold, creating a buying opportunity.

Despite outsized volatility and liquidity challenges ahead, the possibility of relief for munis is not too far off, analysts say, but USTs lead the way for exempts.

The Texas Natural Gas Securitization Finance Corporation picked a team of underwriters to sell debt for utilities hit hard during 2021’s Winter Storm Uri.

Municipal returns in April were deeply negative, bringing the year-to-date figure to near 9% losses, the largest posted on the Bloomberg Muni Index since its inception in the 1980s.

A taxable bond issue will raise $3.4 billion for extraordinary costs incurred by natural gas utilities during deadly Winter Storm Uri that hit Texas in 2021.

Denver will head to the municipal market next week with its biggest new money general obligation bond sale ever at $366.4 million.

The university will decide on a final structure for a $500 million sale that could go as long as 100 years at the time of pricing, which is expected next week.

Total March volume was $39.363 billion in 793 deals versus $47.763 billion in 1,218 issues a year earlier but above the $34.363 billion average.

Dallas Fort Worth International Airport will bring its first new money issue since 2017 to the municipal bond market next week, buoyed by an rating upgrade.

This month the University of Michigan sold $1.2 billion and Michigan State University sold $500 million of taxable 100-year bonds.

The University of Michigan follows Michigan State this month in joining the club of universities offering 100-year bond maturities.

The Investment Company Institute on Wednesday reported $2.637 billion of outflows in the week ending Feb. 23, down from $3.120 billion of outflows in the previous week.

In a Bond Buyer survey, 57% of participants believe issuance will be less than $475 billion. Additionally, 47% said ESG would have the greatest impact on the public finance industry in 2022.

February volume was $26.481 billion in 594 deals versus $37.052 billion in 981 issues a year earlier, bringing total volume for the first two months of the year to $51.426 billion, or 20% less than 2021.

An unfortunate custom in municipal finance is to discount every cash flow with the same rate, namely by the yield of the refunding issue. This underestimates the worth of nearby savings, and overestimates that of savings in the distant future.

January issuance declined by 14.7% year-over-year amid a rising-rate and volatile environment.

Skokie held on to its double-A tier ratings as it preps a pension obligation bond issue to bring its public safety pension funding ratios to 90%.

The U.S. Treasury selloff caught up to tax-exempts with two to three basis point cuts to scales, but munis still outperform.