MultiPlan leads $2 billion primary, market firms broadly; funds plunge $4.4 billion

By Paul Deckelman and Paul A. Harris

New York, Nov. 16 – After many days of overall softness, the high-yield market turned decidedly firmer on Thursday, taking its cue from a reinvigorated stock market and paced by continued strong new-deal issuance.

High-yield syndicate sources said that just under $2 billion of new dollar-denominated and fully junk-rated paper came to market in three tranches during the session, led by a $1.3 billion offering of PIK toggle notes from healthcare cost management solutions provider MultiPlan, Inc.

Alight Solutions, a provider of benefits outsourcing services, priced a downsized $180 million add-on to an existing issue of 2025 notes and medical technologies company Teleflex Inc. did a $500 million 10-year offering.

In the secondary arena, traders saw those new Teleflex notes firm smartly, on market-leading volume.

Away from the new deals, traders saw most high-yield names firming.

Oil and gas credits like California Resources Corp. and EP Energy Corp. were solidly better, even though crude oil prices continued to fall back.

Statistical market performance measures turned higher across the board on Thursday for the first time in nearly a month.

While those performance indicators shot northward, flows of investor cash into or out of high-yield mutual funds and exchange-traded funds moved sharply deeper into negative territory this week, as $4.44 billion left those weekly reporting-only domestic funds during the week ended Wednesday.

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.