MuniLand

Darrell Preston of Bloomberg News wrote a great piece comparing the yields on trades of comparably rated corporate and municipal bonds. He highlighted that corporate bonds have a much higher risk of default than municipal bonds but have similar yields. His analysis suggests that risk is not being properly priced if in fact ratings between asset classes are comparable and that municipal issuers are paying interest rates that are too high.

Two years after Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings changed standards to put municipal credits on the same footing as corporates, California and Illinois are among states that still pay more for debt than similarly or lower-rated corporations, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Yet Moody’s says companies default at 86 times the municipal rate.

“Taxpayers continue to get a raw deal,” said Tom Dresslar, spokesman for California Treasurer Bill Lockyer, who pressed for the rating changes. “Not much has changed.”

Preston’s article compares the yield for recent trades for the state of California and a private energy producer, which are rated at near-equivalent levels:

When California and A2 rated Idaho Power both sold 30-year debt this month, the utility’s bonds priced 6 basis points lower than California’s … according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Boise company provides electricity for southern Idaho and eastern Oregon. The state is rated one step higher at A1 and offers tax-exempt securities to provide an incentive to investors to accept a lower yield.

The following is from guest commentator Terry Hults, Senior Portfolio Manager of Municipal Investments, at AllianceBernstein. It’s helpful to see municipal bond investing in a broader light and the data above really frames the discussion well.

Municipal bonds have an after-tax yield edge over Treasuries, corporates and other taxable bonds most of the time—but not always, as the display above  shows. Opportunities are driven by sector supply and demand, credit-quality trends, volatility, and changes in tax law. Treasuries did best in 2007 and 2008, corporates did best in 2009, and mortgages did best in 2010.

Adding a judicious allocation to these taxable sectors during those years would have meaningfully added to the returns of a tax-aware portfolio. Today, low interest rates and the fear of future rate increases have driven some bond investors into shorter bonds and cash. But an investment strategy that considers municipal and taxable bonds across the full credit spectrum provides greater ability to pursue return without taking undue risk.

Two major American cities are embarking on large capital programs, but in very different ways. Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has a $1.8 billion, five-year plan that he will fund with municipal bonds, while Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is trying to push a $7 billion plan, which will be paid for by private investors, through the city council. It would be hard to find to two more dissimilar approaches to rebuilding America’s urban infrastructure or two more different lists of who will reap the monetary benefit of the improvements.

Boston approaches its infrastructure needs with a rolling five-year schedule of projects that is updated on an annual basis. This allows for more controlled expensing and planning. In contrast, Chicago’s Emanuel announced his infrastructure privatization plan in January with very few details and buy-in only from the private investors who will benefit from their involvement. The Chicago proposal gives control of infrastructure decisions to a panel of four private citizens and one city council member with no ability for the city council to have oversight on projects and contracts. Chicago has a terrible history of leaving taxpayer money on the table in its privatization efforts. In 2008 the city’s parking meters were leased out to private investors for a tiny sum:

Chicago drivers will pay a Morgan Stanley-led partnership at least $11.6 billion to park at city meters over the next 75 years, 10 times what Mayor Richard Daley got when he leased the system to investors in 2008.

Kevin Grey of Reuters wrote a delightful piece describing the opening of the the new home of the Miami Marlins. The stadium has all the touristy bells and whistles that you would expect from a state that brought us Walt Disney World, Universal Studios and Sea World:

When baseball’s Opening Day kicks off next week, the Miami Marlins will inaugurate a new $515 million ballpark built with all the trappings of South Florida – two enormous fish tanks, palm trees and a kitschy (of course) home run celebration display.

With all its fancy trappings, the Marlins’ new stadium could very well set the national standard for family-friendly sports destinations. But after the opening-day fireworks dissipate, it will become clear that the ballpark sets a low bar for public diligence and oversight and that it could result in an SEC sanction (or worse) for some local public officials.

Last week I called Puerto Rico “America’s Greece” partly because of its financial statistics and partly because of its inclusion in the muniland bad-boy list maintained by Thomson Reuters Municipal Market Data. What the bad-boy list tells us is how much the bonds of the weakest issuers trade over the AAA benchmark. To put it another way, that difference is the premium the market charges for the risk of owning these bonds; it also reflects the premium the bad-boy issuers would have to pay to bring new bonds to market. For example, Puerto Rico, currently the weakest borrower on the list, would have to pay 225 basis points more than a AAA 10-year bond to borrow. Given that MMD AAA benchmark closed on Tuesday at 2.33 percent, that would mean an investor would demand a yield of 4.58 percent to buy a 10-year Puerto Rico general obligation bond. Also using Tuesday’s numbers, investors would demand a yield of 3.88 percent to own a 10-year California GO bond. This is how the market works — it punishes the weak.

Studying the chart above and table below you get a sense of the relationship between credit quality and the interest surcharge. The weaker the credit quality — that is, the lower the number or rating — the higher the interest paid. There are other factors that affect the premium, including the tax rates in the state (higher-taxed and wealthier states have lots of demand from their citizens for tax-exempt municipal bonds) and the recent supply of new bonds in the state. But the fundamental bond market truism remains: The riskier you are, the higher the interest rate you pay. In muniland these are the bad boys. Issuer Spread S&P rating Moody’s rating Debt & unfunded pensions Puerto Rico 225 BBB (6) Baa1 (6.5) $ 64 B Illinois 155 A+ (8) A2 (9) $ 86 B California 90 A- (7) A1 (8) $ 137 B Nevada 65 AA (9) Aa2 (9) $ 4 B Rhode Island 55 AA (9) Aa2 (9) $ 6 B Michigan 53 AA- (8.5) Aa2 (9) $ 19 B D.C. 43 A+ (8) Aa2 (9) $ 6 B New York City 43 AA (9) Aa2 (9) $ 161 B Ohio 35 AA+ (9.5) Aa1 (9.5) $ 14 B New Jersey 30 AA- (8.5) Aa3 (8.5) $ 60  B

Source: Municipal MarketData, Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, local government budget reports, official statements.

The SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, muniland’s uber-regulator, issued a “Risk Alert” yesterday directed at underwriters of municipal bond offerings. The alert basically said: If you offer new bonds for sale, you must perform due diligence on the issuer. And you better document what you did.

I have to wonder about all the sudden fuss. The SEC’s “Risk Alert” was just restating a fundamental law in securities markets that requires securities dealers to investigate and verify what they are offering to investors. In other words, dealers must know their product, because there is no immunity for selling bad stuff. It’s a little shocking that the SEC has to remind securities dealers that they are required to do due diligence, but they went further and detailed some specifics on what had to be done (Page 3, emphasis mine):

the Commission also stated that sole reliance on an issuer will not suffice in meeting an underwriter’s “reasonable basis” obligations.

My Thomson Reuters colleague at Municipal Market Data, Daniel Berger, published an excellent report on the debt of the 40 poorest U.S. cities. His work is exclusively for MMD subscribers, but I excerpted the high-level part where he summarizes the general view the credit rating agencies have about municipalities. Here is what Dan had to say:

Moody’s

According to a recent report from Moody’s, the outlook for various… local governments remains negative. It cited a weak national economy and possible global risks to stock markets that could hurt state revenue. Another problem is the austerity measures of the federal government, which diminish any chance of more stimulus aid. This week Moody’s released the results of a default study of municipal bond issuers using default data from 1970 through 2011. They believe that revenue bonds will account for most of the troubled issuers and they foresee a “very small but growing number” of local government issuers defaulting on their debt.

Fitch

Fitch has no single outlook for the local governments. However, localities face two big concerns. First, Fitch expects an inflation-adjusted 13% decline in property values. Taken together with the fact that assessments are catching up with previous declines, Fitch expects further declines in property tax revenues for local governments. These declines may pressure some local bonds.

Dear Governor Fortuño:

I wanted to write you to discuss the condition of Puerto Rico’s economy and its municipal debt load. After I wrote a column last week entitled “Puerto Rico is America’s Greece,” I was surprised to see the piece get a lot of attention. What I said has been common knowledge in the U.S. bond market for some time, and the facts that I brought up have been previously pointed out by the major credit rating agencies. For those in municipal bond markets, I wasn’t really adding much that was new to the conversation.

But it turned out the attention my piece was getting was from people outside the bond market. Those who were responding to it were those who love Puerto Rico and are concerned about its future, namely its citizens. They seized on what I wrote and passed it around on Facebook. Newspapers like elnuevodia.com and blogs picked it up and debated the fine points of the island’s unemployment rate and deficit spending. I’ve never seen anything like it in the United States.

Now, before going any further I need to mention that I made one mistake in that piece, which I did not discover until I read the rating agencies’ reports about the commonwealth. Your constitution requires that bond principal and interest be repaid before your government can make any other expenditures. That means bond repayments take precedence over payments for education, healthcare, government-worker wages and pensions. Bond markets cheer for this, of course, but I’m not sure that your citizens are entirely aware of it. Michael Corkery of the Wall Street Journal also wrote about your bond offering last week and didn’t mention the seniority of payments that makes your debt so appealing to investors.

The municipal bond market is an arcane topic that receives little attention from the mainstream media or the academy (there are not many sources of complete information online, either). Fortunately there are several new muni books that are miles ahead of the thick tome that was previously lauded as the industry must-read: The Handbook of Municipal Bonds, part of the Frank Fabozzi series. Weighing in at over 900 pages, the Fabozzi book is best left for advanced muni market participants.

The Fundamentals of Municipal Bonds

Written by Neil O’Hara for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, Fundamentals is being used as the textbook for the “Muni Bond School” that SIFMA and the New York Municipal Bond Club are conducting now. It’s an excellent general primer on the market.

Bloomberg Visual Guide to Municipal Bonds

Longtime muni industry leader Robert Doty has authored a wonderful, visual primer on muniland that blends information about the bond types and pricing and trading conventions with notes on muni tax exemption and regulation. Doty’s book is geared toward investors. It’s colorful and a lovely size to hold in your hands (approx 8 in. by 12 in.). Its only drawback is that it is heavy on the Bloomberg terminal screenshots, which are only available to professional Bloomberg subscribers. Otherwise the book is a delight.

There is a very blurry line in muniland between truly public activities and private activities that allegedly have some public good, and into this ill-defined space, for-profit and non-profit organizations have found ways to issue tax-exempt municipal bonds. This gray area should be a prime target for Congress to examine when it goes looking for ways to raise more tax revenue from muniland.

It’s easy to find these quasi-public projects. A quick look at the listing of today’s new bond offerings on EMMA immediately produces this $29 million bond offering at the private Rollins College in Florida to fund the renovation of its science center, campus center and one of its residence halls. There is an additional $15 million bond offering at the college to refund bonds previously issued at a higher interest rate. These bonds are being issued through Florida’s Higher Education Facilities Financing Authority, which is acting as public conduit for the private school. Rollins, an exclusive southern college, charges $50,400 per year for tuition, room and board. At these tuition levels it’s hard to see how much good the general population receives.

A more egregious example in today’s muniland bond offerings is the remarketing agreement for $14 million in bonds issued for Koch Industries subsidiary Georgia-Pacific to acquire and construct solid waste disposal facilities in the Parish of East Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In the case of the Koch bonds, the conduit authority is the Industrial Development Board of the parish. Koch Industries is not some small fish — just last year Forbes listed it as the second-largest privately held company in the country with estimated annual revenues of $100 billion.