June 13th, 2013, 8:54 pm
Hi,I'm looking at a British food retailer Morrison's EUR issuance and its attractiveness. The guidance was MS + 90-95 bps and they issued a 2020 bond with a MS + 88 bps at a yield of 2,35%. Morrison is rated A3 by Moody's.The closest peer to compare Morrison is Tesco which is rated one notch below Morrison at BBB+ by Moody's and has already a EUR issuance. Nevertheless, Tesco has business in EUR while Morrison's business is in totally GBP, only issuing a EUR bond for diversification.Tesco has a 2018 EUR denominated bond trading at 50 bps ASW and 1,62% Mid YTW. I did a simple interpolation (I don't know whether it is ok to do that). Tesco 2018s exact maturity is 4,66 years. Hence the ASW per month is 50/(4,66*12) = 0,89 bps. Which would imply an ASW of (7*12*0,89) = 75 bps for a hypothetical Tesco 2020 bond in EUR.When I look at GBP bonds of Tesco and Morrison. Tesco 23s in GBP trade at 157 bps ASW and 3,71 YTW while Morrison 23s in GBP trade at 142 bps ASW and 3,66% YTW. Hence Tesco is trading wider than Morrison in GBP bonds which is logical given it's rated one notch below Morrison.Then, why does a company pay a higher spread when it issues a bond in EUR? In this case Morrison paid 88 bps while Tesco 20 would imply a 75 bps spread.Do you think this is cheap vs Tesco 18s based on this logic? How would you decide whether Morrison EUR bond is cheap vs Tesco 18s, is what I'm doing above the right way to tackle this?And how would you compare the GBP issues with EUR issues? For instance can you come up with an ASW for a hypothetical GBP 20 for Tesco by using Tesco 23s and look at he spread difference between this GBP issue and hypothetical Tesco EUR 20s calculated above and use it to come up with a price for Morrison 20s to be issued in EUR? Or is there another way to use the GBP issues to come up with a EUR issue midswap rate?Many thanks in advance for any suggestions and answers.