Primary pace slackens as Mercer brings sole dollar deal; Claire’s climbs on results

By Paul Deckelman and Paul A. Harris

New York, Dec. 6 – The high-yield primary market took a breather on Wednesday, as a lone, modest-sized dollar-denominated deal priced – in sharp contrast to Monday and Tuesday, which had each seen more than $3.5 billion of new paper emerge from multiple issuers.

Canadian forest products company Mercer International Inc. priced a quickly shopped $300 million of eight-year notes – which were heard to have firmed smartly on brisk aftermarket volume.

Primaryside players meantime were anticipating Thursday pricings from payments processing company Vantiv, LLC and education materials provider McGraw-Hill Education, Inc. – the former deal a two-part, dual-currency megadeal, the latter a single-tranche PIK toggle notes offering.

Besides the robust activity in the new Mercer International paper, secondary market traders saw likewise hefty trading volumes in recently priced credits such as Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., Springleaf Finance Corp., Quicken Loans, Inc. and Owens-Illinois Inc., all of them Tuesday pricings, as well as Monday’s big deal from Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc.

Away from the new issues, Claire’s Stores, Inc.’s bonds were solidly better after the specialty retailer reported positive fiscal third-quarter results.

Statistical market performance measures turned lower on Wednesday for the first time in three weeks, after having been mixed on Tuesday after having been stronger all around on Monday. The last previous time the indicators were seen heading south was back on Nov. 15.

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