Corporate Bond Issuers Drive Surge In New CUSIP Issuance - Municipal Volumes Continue To Trend Lower

CUSIP Global Services (CGS) today announced the release of its CUSIP Issuance Trends Report for January 2023. The report, which tracks the issuance of new security identifiers as an early indicator of debt and capital markets activity over the next quarter, found a significant increase in request volume for new corporate identifiers and a slowdown in request volume for new municipal identifiers.

North American corporate requests totaled 5,981 in January, which is up 13.3% on a monthly basis. On a year-over-year basis, North American corporate requests closed out January up 30.5% over January 2022 totals. The increase in corporate CUSIP request volume was driven largely by a significant surge in domestic corporate debt volume, which more than doubled (101.9%) versus December totals and rose 86.7% on a year-over-year basis. CUSIP request volume for long-term certificates of deposit (CDs) with maturities of one year or more also rose, increasing 6.0% on a monthly basis and 33.0% on a year-over-year basis.

Municipal request volume decreased on both a monthly and annualized basis. The aggregate total of identifier requests for new municipal securities – including municipal bonds, long-term and short-term notes, and commercial paper – fell 3.0% versus December totals. On a year-over-year basis, overall municipal volumes are down 21.2%. Texas led state-level municipal request volume with a total of 94 new CUSIP requests in January, followed by New York and Wisconsin, each with 43.

“As we kick of 2023, we see a continuation of a few trends that were developing throughout the year, last year, most notably the slowdown in municipal bond issuance and continued strength in CD volume,” said Gerard Faulkner, Director of Operations for CGS. “The most noteworthy moves this month, however, were in the U.S. corporate bond market, where we saw a significant spike in volume when compared with last month and year-ago figures. It will be interesting to see whether this was a one-month anomaly or perhaps there is some pent-up demand showing up in the corporate bond market.”

Requests for international equity CUSIPs fell 3.2% in January while international debt CUSIP requests rose 26.7%. On an annualized basis, international equity CUSIP requests are down 2.5% and international debt CUSIP requests are down 46.5%.

To view the full CUSIP Issuance Trends report for January, please click here.

Following is a breakdown of new CUSIP Identifier requests by asset class year-to-date through January 2023: