Frontier, Springleaf lead year’s busiest day; new issues busy; funds lose $525 million

By Paul Deckelman and Paul A. Harris

New York, March 8 – The high-yield primary market remained on fire for a third consecutive session on Thursday, in fact racking up the heaviest new issue volume so far this year.

Syndicate sources said that Frontier Communications Corp. had the big deal of the day, with the wireline telecommunications company pricing $1.6 billion of eight-year senior secured paper in a forward calendar transaction.

They said that consumer lender Springleaf Finance Corp. brought a quick-to-market offering of seven-year notes, twice upsized to a final volume of $1.25 billion.

Retailer J.C. Penney Co., Inc. stepped in with a quickly shopped and upsized $400 million of seven-year secured notes.

And CSI Compressco LP, a provider of compression services to the oil and natural gas industry, came in with a $350 million secured forward calendar offering.

In the secondary market, traders said that new issues were the dominant force, with Frontier’s big new deal easily topping the day’s Most Actives list.

Frontier’s existing bonds were also very active, as has been the case all week, but were mixed on the session.

Statistical market performance measures turned mixed on Thursday after being lower all around on Wednesday.

Another numerical indicator – cash flows for high-yield mutual funds and exchange-traded funds – remained in negative territory for an eighth week after $525 million left those weekly reporting-only domestic funds.

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