Centene megadeal, Live Nation drive by; Live Nation firmer; energy names off as oil drops

By Paul Deckelman and Paul A. Harris

New York, Oct. 26 – The high-yield primary market saw a pair of new deals get done on Wednesday – both of them opportunistically timed and quickly shopped drive-by offerings rather than regularly scheduled forward calendar transactions.

The big deal of the day came from health-care services provider Centene Corp., which upsized its already announced offering of 8.25-year notes to $1.2 billion.

Earlier in the session, concert promoter and live-event ticket provider Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. did a $575 million offering of eight-year notes.

Traders said the new Live Event paper was modestly firmer when it hit the aftermarket.

The traders meantime reported that activity in recently priced new deals accounted for much of the trading activity during the session, including Tuesday’s offering from Rackspace Hosting Inc. and Monday’s deals from Netflix, Inc. and United Rentals, Inc.

Away from the deals that have already priced, syndicate sources said that potato products producer Lamb Weston Holdings, Inc. would be hitting the road Thursday to start marketing a planned $1.67 billion two-part note offering to potential investors.

Away from the new-deal world, traders said that energy-related names such as California Resources Corp., Weatherford International, Sanchez Energy Corp. and Noble Corp. plc were among the notable losers, hurt by the continued slide in world crude oil prices.

Statistical market performance measures turned lower across the board on Wednesday. They were mixed on Tuesday and higher all around on Monday.

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