PFM on Tuesday launched
This investor relations platform provides large amounts of issuer data — as well as U.S. Census data, government agency information, the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s EMMA and other sources — collected for investors in the municipal securities space.
“The breadth and depth of this product will provide unprecedented connection throughout the muni bond community, bridging existing gaps in the marketplace,” said Dan Kozloff, Managing Director at PFM and one of the co-creators of the platform. Kozloff, and Munite’s other co-founder, Michael Mace, Managing Director and Public Power Group Leader, have worked on the project for the past two and a half years.
In simple terms, Munite provides investors with searchable, sortable, sector-specific data that can inform investor decision-making. It also encourages issuers to tell their stories to the potential buyers of their bonds as well as to other issuers.
“Munite contains numerous feeds of data, including secondary market pricing information on issuer’s bonds, and who owns them. It lets issuers see the type of information that drives investor decisions,” Kozloff and Mace said. “Munite’s comparative issuer data tools also provide valuable insight on industry peers and partners for issuer subscribers to Munite.”
The Munite platform provides the opportunity for institutional investors to build out customizable “dashboards” for any of the more than 40,000 issuers in Munite’s database, PFM said.
Plug in an issuer — say, the City of Springfield — and get their previous issuances, rating and/or ratings changes they may have experienced, trade data, population data, among other areas.
PFM developed Munite as a stand-alone product for all industry stakeholders.
“We want it to carry itself — this is definitely a muni market product at large and not just focused on PFM business,” Mace said.
What does it cost and who pays?
The issuer pays a subscription fee, with Munite’s anticipation that the initial target market is issuers who have about $500 million or more of outstanding debt and that they may be charged anywhere from $10 thousand per year, up to or beyond $30 thousand per year, again depending on their complexity and debt outstanding. Munite also adds value and utility for issuers with less than $500 million of debt that access the municipal market on a regular basis, Kozloff and Mace added.
The duo said the issuers and institutional investors they’ve been demo-ing the product with have been enthusiastic about the platform. If this platform can connect the issuer directly and make investment analysts’ jobs easier, then Munite officials said they think issuers will be keen to spend the money to make that direct connection to their investors, eventually saving the issuer money and the investor time.
Until the product is fully launched, Munite was not ready to identify prospective issuers or investors with whom to speak about it.
What types of investors is this platform targeting?
At this stage, Munite will verify when an institutional investor signs up for the platform and allow them to create their own customizable dashboards tailored to the types of issuers they want to monitor. The institutional investor can create as many dashboards as they like and will also have the ability to share their dashboards with their colleagues.
On the retail front, once an issuer pays Munite to become a subscriber, they will be given a specific link to put on their own websites.
The issuer can then direct the retail investor to their own website and that investor can access a link that directs them to Munite’s portal, providing them with the same level of access to their information as institutional investors.
Mace said Munite is not just an “investor relations” tool, but one that brings the entire municipal industry together for real-time data across the board.
“PFM embarked on this project as the result of our decades of collective experience in observing the industry’s desire for a best practices approach to municipal investor relations,” said Dan Hartman, leader of PFM’s financial advisory business. “We designed and developed Munite based on input from our financial advisory professionals who have spent their careers working with issuers to ensure market participants have the information they need to help fund critical infrastructure needs.”
