High-grade supply ramps up; Intel, Coca-Cola, Moody’s price; spreads at highest since 2009

By Cristal Cody

Tupelo, Miss., March 20 – Despite the turmoil in the financial markets and American life with states going into lockdown due to the coronavirus, several issuers priced high-grade bonds on Friday and pushed the week’s volume to more than $60 billion.

Intel Corp. priced an $8 billion six-tranche offering of senior notes.

Coca-Cola Co. brought $5 billion of senior notes in five tranches.

Charles Schwab Corp. sold $1.1 billion of senior notes in two parts.

Moody's Corp. tapped the primary market with a $700 million offering of five-year senior notes.

Cleaning and sanitizing company Ecolab Inc. priced $500 million of 10-year senior notes.

In addition, EOG Resources, Inc. offered three tranches of fixed-rate senior notes and Appalachian Power Co. marketed fixed-rate senior notes.

Credit spreads softened.

The Markit CDX North American Investment Grade 33 index headed out on Friday wider at a 146.12 bps spread from 138.51 bps on Thursday.

High-grade spreads have moved past the wides seen in 2015 and 2016, one source said on Friday.

“Everybody’s just trying to get a feel for what the endgame is on this,” the source said. “These are the highest spreads we’ve had since the crisis in ’08, ’09. I haven’t seen these spread levels since the summer of ’09.”

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