Planned Weatherford looks cheap; BioMarin down in line; Volkswagen drops hard outright

By Rebecca Melvin

New York, Sept. 21 – Convertibles players were sizing up Weatherford International plc’s offering of mandatory exchangeable subordinated notes on Monday after the company launched the deal early in the session for same-day pricing.

The Weatherford deal, which together with a secondary stock offering was expected to clock in at $1 billion in size, was looking between 1% cheap to 2.5% cheap, according to market sources.

There was no gray market in the planned Weatherford paper at late morning, sources said.

Elsewhere, there was some activity in biotechnology convertibles as biotech shares dropped, but the moves were mostly in line, a New York-based trader said.

BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc.’s convertibles held in or even richened with equity weakness, the trader said.

The BioMarin A tranche, or the 0.75% convertibles due 2018, was seen trading down to 144.25 from about 151 previously, a trader said.

Shares of the Novato, Calif.-based biopharmaceutical company fell $8.56, or 6.6%, to $122.09.

The mandatory convertibles of Volkswagen AG got smoked in active trade in Europe after the revelation that Volkswagen installed software in its diesel-powered engines designed to deceive U.S. regulators about the cars’ emissions, sources said.

The Volkswagen 5.5% mandatory convertible notes, which mature in six weeks, fell hard on an outright basis to about 87 from 101, and came on swap by 2 points to 5 points, depending on delta, a New York-based trader said.

© 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.