Corporate And Municipal CUSIP Request Volumes Fall In July - CD Volumes Start To Sputter

CUSIP Global Services (CGS) today announced the release of its CUSIP Issuance Trends Report for July 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 monthly decrease in request volume for new corporate and municipal identifiers.

North American corporate requests totaled 5,895 in July, which is down 13.2% on a monthly basis. On a year-over-year basis, North American corporate requests closed the month up 11.7% over year ago totals. The monthly volume decrease was driven by a 4.9% decrease in requests for U.S. corporate debt and a 4.4% decrease in requests for U.S. corporate equity identifiers. Request volumes for both long- and short-term certificates of deposit (CDs) also declined by 14.8% (maturities longer than one year) and 18.3% (maturities shorter than one year). This is the second time this year that CD volumes have declined after posting consistent monthly gains for more than a year, starting in December 2021.

Municipal request volume also fell this month. The aggregate total of identifier requests for new municipal securities – including municipal bonds, long-term and short-term notes, and commercial paper – declined 30.2% versus June totals. On a year-over-year basis, overall municipal volumes are down 15.9%. Texas led state-level municipal request volume with a total of 198 new CUSIP requests in July, followed by New York (114) and New Jersey (67).

“We're continuing to see some effects of seasonality in the month-to-month numbers, particularly in the municipal space, where we’re coming out of the seasonal peak in municipal issuance volume,” said Gerard Faulkner, Director of Operations for CGS. “The monthly slowdown in CD request volume—for both longer-term and short-term CDs is noteworthy, however, after seeing so many consecutive months of growth. We may be seeing the beginning of investor sentiment cooling on CDs.”

Requests for international equity CUSIPs rose 5.0% in July while international debt CUSIP requests rose 7.9%. On an annualized basis, international equity CUSIP requests are down 14.3% and international debt CUSIP requests are down 28.0%.

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

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