Municipals, Treasuries rally after nonfarm payrolls report; high-grade munis return 0.09%

By Sheri Kasprzak

New York, April 4 - Municipals followed closely with Treasuries on Friday following a less-than-stellar nonfarm payrolls report, market insiders said. Yields were reportedly lower by 3 basis points to 6 bps across the curve.

Treasuries rallied after the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that nonfarm payrolls expanded by 192,000 in March, lower than the 200,000 consensus.

After the report was released, the five-year Treasury note yield fell by 8.5 bps to close the session at 1.705%, the 10-year note yield fell by 6 bps to 2.732%, and the 30-year bond yield fell by 3.5 bps to 3.591%.

High-grade munis return 0.09%

Elsewhere in the market Friday, J.R. Rieger, global head of fixed-income indexes, and Kevin Horan, director of fixed-income indexes with S&P Dow Jones Indices, said investment-grade municipals returned 0.09% for the month of March, as measured by the S&P National AMT-Free Municipal Bond index. For the quarter, the index returned 3.37%.

Lower-rated municipals in the high-yield index returned 0.76% in March and 6.03% for the quarter.

New York City Transitional set

Looking to the coming week's new-issue activity, the New York City Transitional Finance Authority will hit the market on Tuesday with $760 million of series 2014D future tax secured subordinated bonds.

The offering includes $650 million of tax-exempt bonds and $110 million of taxable bonds.

The tax-exempt portion will be sold on a negotiated basis with BofA Merrill Lynch as the senior manager. The taxable portion will be sold competitively.

Proceeds will be used to finance citywide capital expenditures.

Energy Northwest bonds to price

Also on Tuesday, Energy Northwest of Washington state is set to price $646.5 million of series 2014 electric revenue and refunding bonds (Aa1/AA-/AA) through J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Goldman Sachs & Co. and BofA Merrill Lynch.

The offering includes $529.8 million of series 2014A Columbia Generating Station electric revenue and refunding bonds, $26,015,000 of series 2014A project 3 electric revenue refunding bonds and $90,685,000 of series 2014B Columbia Generating Station taxable revenue and refunding bonds.

Proceeds from the sale will be used to finance capital improvements to the Columbia Generating Station and to refund the corporation's series 2004A, 2004C, 2007A, 2008A, 2009A-B and 2011A revenue bonds.

© 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.