A handful of borrowers, including Wells Fargo & Co., are selling fresh debt in the US investment-grade bond market, signaling that issuers are undaunted after Fitch Ratings stripped the nation of its top-tier rating on Tuesday.
The operating arm of the bank — Wells Fargo Bank — is selling $5 billion of bonds in a benchmark-sized four-part deal comprised of senior notes, according to a person familiar with the transaction, who asked not to be identified as the details are private. The longest dated portion of the offering, a 3-year fixed-rate note, will yield 0.92 percentage points over Treasuries, after initial talks in the range of 1.10 to 1.15 percentage points, the person said.
The deal comes just after Fitch downgraded the US sovereign credit grade one level to AA+ from AAA, arguing the nation’s fiscal health will likely deteriorate over the next three years amid increased borrowing needs. The downgrade followed the US Treasury’s plan to escalate debt issuance, an announcement that sent the 10-year Treasury yields climbing to the highest levels since November.
A measure of perceived risk in US corporate debt markets, the IG CDX spread, widened 2.2 basis points to 66.73 as of 2:52 p.m. New York time.
The timing of the downgrade is “odd,” and “the Fitch assessment doesn’t tell the markets much they didn’t already know,” Bloomberg Intelligence’s Stuart Paul and Anna Wong wrote in a note. That may explain why investment-grade issuance has proceeded full steam ahead even as credit risk has been driven higher by the downgrade.
This is the third time the Wells Fargo has tapped the bond market in recent weeks. The bank previously raised $8.5 billion and $1.7 billion of bonds after the lender’s second-quarter earnings beat estimates. The latter transaction was also the first preferred deal since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank sparked broader industry tumult in March.
Monday’s debt issuance from Wells Fargo could mean that the bank is trying to guard against deposit outflows that have been plaguing the broader industry, according to BI’s Arnold Kakuda.
“The reason why folks do operating company debt is because it’s a way to offset deposit outflow, so it could signal they’re seeing a pick up in deposit pressure,” Kakuda said in a phone interview. Wells Fargo is also facing Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation fees that they will need to pay, he added.
Wells Fargo declined to comment.
Columbia Pipelines and Daimler Truck Finance North America LLC are also in the market Wednesday.
--With assistance from Michael Gambale.
(Updates with deal launch details.)
