Issuers plan nearly $9 billion of new long-term financings this week, including a handful of $1 billion deals.
According to Ipreo LLC and The Bond Buyer, early estimates call for new issuance to total $8.90 billion this week — just shy of the most recent high of $9.29 billion that was actually priced in the week of June 11, according to Thomson Reuters.
Last week, a revised $5.39 billion was actually priced, according to Thomson Reuters figures Friday. Volume was originally estimated at $6.42 billion.
A New York trader said there continues to be increasing demand for individual bonds, including some yet-to-be spent coupon proceeds from the summer reinvestment season.
"Retail is actually picking up," he said. "The little back-up in the last two to three weeks hasn't hurt. The story continues to be that we are in a trading range," and municipals will continue to gain strength from Treasuries, he said.
The Treasury market is up and going stronger than it started the day and ended last night," the trader added.
This week, a $1.3 billion sale of tax and revenue anticipation notes from Los Angeles will dominate the short-term new-issue activity.
The one-year TRANs are rated MIG-1 by Moody's Investors Service, SP1-plus by Standard & Poor's and F1-plus by Fitch Ratings and will be priced by Ramirez & Co. on Thursday.
In the long-term competitive market, the largest deal will hail from the New York State Dormitory Authority, which is expected to issue over $1 billion of state personal income-tax revenue debt on Tuesday.
The offering consists of tax-exempt bonds in three series totaling $1.12 billion and maturing from 2015 to 2044, while the taxable series will total $81.62 million and matures from 2016 to 2024.
Washington State will bring a three-pronged general obligation bond sale to market on Wednesday totaling around $1 billion.
The financing consists of $402.03 million, $392.57 million, and $202.82 million — all structured as serials and rated Aa1 by Moody's and AA-plus by Standard & Poor's and Fitch.
"Away from the decent competitive deals, in general, I think the calendar is pretty manageable," the trader said.
"We found out this week there is money out there, and there have been decent inflows into municipal bond mutual funds," he said, noting that the four-week running average has hovered around $320 million.
"It's not great, but the money continues to flow in," he said.
A $500 million sale of general obligation consolidated loan bonds from Massachusetts is designated as floating-rate securities that are tied to the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association index.
The deal will consist of two series of $250 million each of SIFMA floating-rate notes that will be priced by Jefferies LLC on Wednesday and are rated Aa1 by Moody's and AA-plus by both Standard & Poor's and Fitch.
A two-pronged, GO refunding from the Texas Public Finance Authority is tentatively sized at $491 million and slated for pricing by JPMorgan Securities on Tuesday.
The deal may consist of $258 million of tax-exempt general obligation refunding bonds and $233 million of taxable GO refunding bonds, though the sizes are subject to change, a source at JPMorgan said on Friday.
Rated triple-A by all three rating agencies, both series are structured as serial bonds maturing from 2015 to 2034.
An $944 million Texas Department of Transportation general obligation mobility fund refunding was the largest deal to price last week.
The issuer took advantage of increasing demand and increased the size of the deal from $900 million.
