Investors snap up record $39 billion emerging market sovereign bond splurge

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By Jorgelina do Rosario

LONDON (Reuters) - Developing countries have sold a huge $39 billion of international bonds since the start of the year, with investors happy to pile into riskier debt as they bet global interest rates are nearing a peak.

The first half of January saw 11 countries launch more than 20 dollar- and euro-denominated bond issues. The scale of borrowing dwarfs the previous record of $26 billion raised in the same period in 2018, data from Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) shows.

All the sales were at least three times oversubscribed, a sign that appetite for emerging market debt is back after a year in which many countries were effectively locked out from markets as global interest rates surged.

"More and more investors are willing to deploy cash and take some risks," Merveille Paja, EEMEA sovereign credit strategist for BofA said, adding that issuers such as Romania and Hungary had offered "extremely attractive premiums" on their recently issued dollar bonds.

Investment-grade-rated Saudi Arabia is the largest borrower so far, having sold $10 billion of five-, 10- and 30-year dollar bonds.

High-yield countries have also joined the issuance frenzy. Turkey sold a $2.75 billion Eurobond at a 9.75% yield on Thursday while Mongolia is also set to tap markets.

"A coupon of about 10%-ish is quite high even by Turkey's standards," said Paul Greer, portfolio manager at Fidelity International.    

Morgan Stanley strategist Simon Waever said yields are high in historic terms, but that "most countries have no choice but to issue and absorb the higher cost".

Issuance year-to-date was already equivalent to 40% of all 2022's emerging hard-currency bond issuance, said Waever.

ROARING START

While emerging bond markets are off to a roaring start, that might not translate into a bumper year overall.

Morgan Stanley predicts total 2023 sovereign debt gross sales to hit $143 billion, driven by sales from the Middle East and North Africa and investment-grade countries in Asia. That is well above last year's multi-year low of $95 billion, but well short of 2020's record $233 billion.

Madhur Agarwal, head of Debt Capital Markets Origination Asia ex. Japan at JPMorgan (NYSE:JPM), said that while January is usually a good month for countries to issue, demand was high because "investors see we are nearing the cap on U.S. interest rate hikes and it should be more stable going forward".

Emerging economies were not alone in their push to raise cash, with U.S. corporate issuers, European governments and other parts of the fixed income universe also ramping up issuance at the start of the year, some raising funds to help offset the impact of the energy crisis.

Costa Rica and Dominican Republic are among countries that need to tap the market this year and are likely to move soon, said Carlos de Sousa, a portfolio manager at Vontobel.

"It doesn't mean this is a short window of opportunity. It may be a long one, but the countries just don't know and we don't know either," de Sousa added, stressing that only two months ago investors "were still very much on the defensive" and sitting on a pile of cash.

With almost no bonds maturing in 2023, most Sub-Saharan Africa economies don't need to issue overseas debt, de Sousa said, while Ivory Coast and Senegal will only do so if the market continues to rally.

Nigeria could muddle through this year's presidential election without borrowing if it maintains a good buffer of FX reserves, according to Paja from BofA.

"Kenya and Angola will need to tap the market, while South Africa is staying away completely this year," she said.