Morning Commentary: Walmart offers nine tranches; EQT Midstream, RBS, Xcel, Finnvera on deck

By Cristal Cody

Tupelo, Miss., June 20 – Walmart Inc. filed details of a nine-tranche offering of fixed- and floating-rate notes with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.

Syndicate sources expected the company to tap the primary market this week following its fixed income investor calls on Monday.

WalMart may price as much as $10 billion of bonds to finance its approximate $16 billion acquisition of India e-commerce company Flipkart Online Services pvt, according to a market source.

Heavy corporate supply is on tap for the session with the market tone improved at the start of the day, sources report.

Issuers including Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc, Bank of America Corp., Crown Castle International Corp., Xcel Energy Inc., EQT Midstream Partners, LP and Marvell Technology Group Ltd. announced plans to print new issues.

Also on deck on Wednesday, Finnvera plc intends to price a Rule 144A and Regulation S benchmark-sized offering of five-year notes that were initially talked to price at a spread of mid-swaps plus 17 basis points, according to an informed source.

Citigroup Global Markets, Goldman Sachs, HSBC Securities (USA) Inc and TD Securities are the bookrunners.

Primary action has been thin week to date, but deal volume totals more than $17 billion so far due to Bayer AG’s $15 billion eight-part offering of senior notes on Monday.

Duke Energy Florida, LLC also priced a $1 billion two-tranche sale of first mortgage bonds on Monday, while on Tuesday, Oneok Inc. sold $1.25 billion of guaranteed fixed-rate senior notes in two tranches.

About $35 billion to as much as $50 billion of volume is expected by market sources for the week.

Elsewhere, investment-grade secondary market volume improved to $18.06 billion on Tuesday from $13.91 billion 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.