Dollar primary still on hold, Stonegate to shop sterling deal; Intelsat adds to gains

By Paul Deckelman and Paul A. Harris

New York, Feb. 28 – For a second consecutive session, the dollar-denominated portion of the high yield world was quiet on Tuesday to close out a busy month of February. Much of Junkbondland’s attention meanwhile remained focused on this week’s well-attended J.P. Morgan high yield conference.

Once again, the only real news in the new-deal realm came out of Europe, where syndicate sources said that British tavern chain operator Stonegate Pub Co. Financing plc was getting ready to hit the road to market a pair of fixed- and floating-rate tranches of five-year sterling-denominated secured notes.

On the domestic front, the only new-deal activity came from the crossover space, as the split-rated liquefied natural gas company Sabine Pass Liquefaction, LLC brought a megadeal-sized 11-year transaction to market.

Away from the new-issue sphere, for a second consecutive session, communications satellite operator Intelsat SA’s bonds were gaining altitude on Tuesday, many of them on heavy volume, after the company formally announced that it will merge with industry peer OneWeb LLC and the combined company will receive a hefty cash injection from Japanese tech company SoftBank. As part of that combination, Intelsat will launch a series of note exchanges that aim to ultimately reduce its overall debt load and bring its leverage ratio down as well.

On the downside, Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc.’s bonds were lower across that company’s capital structure, after the Canadian drugmaker reported weak fourth-quarter results.

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