Citibank plans to issue $500 million of two-year notes backed by credit card receivables, according to regulatory filings.
The deal is Citi’s first this year and only the second by any issuer, after Discover’s $800 million offering this week.
The transaction, via the Citibank Credit Card Issuance Trust, consists of $250 million of class A floating-rate notes due January 2019 and $250 million of fixed-rate Class A notes due January 2019.
To date, there have been no presale report's issued on the deal; however, in the past the major rating agencies have assigned tripe-A ratings to the senior notes issued by the master trust.
Approximately $30 billio of U.S. credit card ABS was issued in 2016, according to Standard & Poor's; that rises to $35 billion, if you include U.S. dollar issuance by non-U.S. issuers. That was slightly higher than S&P's expecation for a range of $20 billion to $25 billion. It was aso an increase of about 26% from 2015.
Generally, issuance in this sector was opportunistic and mainly driven by cost of funds considerations and diversification, the rating agency stated in a December report. "We observed a strong investor demand for 'AAA' rated senior notes issued by banks--most of these transactions were upsized two to three times from the initial offerings," the report states.
