Morning Commentary: ING, Tyson, Best Buy, Torchmark eye deals ahead of Fed; RBS firms

By Cristal Cody

Tupelo, Miss., Sept. 25 – Several investment-grade bond issuers moved forward on Tuesday with plans to tap the primary market.

ING Groep NV is on deck with a three-part offering of senior notes, including one floating-rate tranche.

Tyson Foods, Inc. is offering two tranches of senior notes (Baa2/BBB).

Best Buy Co., Inc. also intends to price new notes. The deal is expected to include $500 million of 10-year senior notes (BBB), according to a ratings release from S&P Global Ratings.

In addition, Torchmark Corp. is marketing 10-year senior notes.

New bonds are expected to price during the session before volume likely ceases on Wednesday as investors await the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy decision and anticipated rate hike, according to market sources.

On average, syndicate sources expect about $20 billion to $25 billion of issuance this week. High-grade issuers priced more than $4 billion of bonds on Monday.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Vodafone Group plc is scheduled to continue a two-day round of fixed income investor calls for a Regulation S multiple currency offering of hybrid notes (expected Baa3/BBB-/BBB-), according to a market source.

The deal from the London-based telecommunications company includes U.S. dollar-denominated notes, euro-denominated notes and pound-denominated notes.

The bookrunners on the dollar-denominated notes are BofA Merrill Lynch, HSBC Securities (USA) Inc., J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Standard Chartered Bank.

In the secondary market, new issues that priced on Monday mostly were tighter, a source said.

Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc’s $1.75 billion of 5.076% fixed-to-floating rate senior notes due Jan. 27, 2030 improved about 2 basis points.

The notes (Baa2/BBB-/BBB+) priced at par to yield a spread of Treasuries plus 200 bps.

Overall secondary market volume on Monday totaled $16.21 billion, according to Trace.

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