Morning Commentary: Progressive, Municipality Finance offer notes; week’s supply thin

By Cristal Cody

Tupelo, Miss., Oct. 18 – Corporate and SSA supply is again on deck on Thursday in the high-grade bond primary market.

Progressive Corp. is offering senior notes in the corporate market via bookrunners Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC and J.P. Morgan Securities LLC.

Also, Municipality Finance plc (Aa1/AA+) plans to price a Rule 144A and Regulation S offering of floating-rate notes due Oct. 26, 2020.

The notes were initially talked to price in the Libor plus 1 basis point area.

JPMorgan, Nomura Securities International, Inc. and TD Securities (USA) LLC are the lead managers.

In other market activity during the session, Constellation Brands, Inc. (Baa3/BBB-) will hold fixed income investor calls via BofA Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.

In addition, Oglethorpe Power Corp. (Baa1//BBB+) begins a two-day round of fixed income investor calls on Thursday via Goldman Sachs and MUFG.

Week to date, more than $14 billion of investment-grade bonds have priced, led by Conagra Brands, Inc.’s $7.03 billion seven-part offering of senior notes on Monday.

About $25 billion to $35 billion of supply was expected by market sources for the week.

In the secondary market, trading volume has been strong with $19.35 billion of investment-grade bonds traded on Wednesday, $23.22 billion on Tuesday and $15.22 billion traded on Monday, according to Trace.

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.