Deals 06/08/2022

Loop Capital Markets Serves as Joint Bookrunner for the City of Atlanta’s $546.420 Million GARB and PFC Series 2022 Bonds

On June 8, 2022, Loop Capital Markets (the “Firm”) served as the joint bookrunner for the city of Atlanta, Georgia’s (the “City”) $382.370 million Airport General Revenue Bonds, Series 2022AB (“Series 2022AB GARBs”) and the City’s $164.050 million Airport Passenger Facility Charge and Subordinate Lien General Revenue Bonds, Series 2022CD (“Series 2022CD PFC Bonds” and together with the Series 2022AB GARBs, the “Bonds”). All of the Bonds were rated Aa3 (Stable) / AA- (Stable) by Moody’s and Fitch, respectively.

The Bonds were issued to finance portions of the 2022 Project, which is comprised of new money projects related to the City of Atlanta’s 2026 Capital Plan (including renovations to runways, terminal, parking facilities and supporting infrastructure). The Series 2022AB GARBs had maturities from 2023 through 2052 while the Series 2022CD PFC Bonds had maturities from 2026-2042.

The Firm provided both superior banking coverage in anticipation of the financing (mandated for senior positions on consecutive GARB financings) and exceptional sales efforts during pre-marketing and marketing during a volatile pricing period. Benchmark tax-exempt and taxable rates rose considerably during the days leading up to pricing in anticipation of May’s CPI release on Friday, June 10. In total, the issue was 2.1x oversubscribed with heavy demand flow in the front end. MMD rose 10 bps, but despite the volatility, the Firm and the other senior manager were able to underwrite at or near pre-pricing levels for the AMT bonds and for some maturities of the Non-AMT bonds.

Across all series, over $44 million of priority orders were generated by the Firm. Serving as joint bookrunner, the Firm was allotted $11.4 million bonds across the 4 series. At the verbal award, the senior managers agreed to underwrite the offering with approximately $180 million in unsold balances. By end of day, the underwriting syndicate committed capital to inventory $39 million of bonds in certain maturities from 2028 to 2047. Undeterred by the daunting and volatile market, the Firm was willing to contribute a significant amount of capital on behalf of the issuer. Despite extremely difficult and volatile markets that saw interest rates increase by more than 60 bp on certain maturities, as 40 year inflation highs and a 75 bp increase by the Federal Reserve negatively impacted the market as well.