Freddie Mac Sells Two Smaller Note Issues To Persistent Demand

Freddie Mac (FRE) on Thursday sold $3 billion of 10-year notes and $5 billion of two-year notes to persistent investor demand.

This time, however, both deals are smaller in size from the massive debt offerings the government-sponsored enterprise has issued in the past couple of months.

Market participants cautioned that the sizes are no indication of investor appetite, and it has more to do with Freddie Mac's preference to keep its issues to manageable size.

Freddie officials weren't available to comment on the offering.

The mortgage company's sale on Thursday was ahead of a U.S. Treasury Department auction of $24 billion in seven-year notes. On Wednesday, a similar auction of five-year Treasury notes met with weaker-than-expected demand, sparking some concern that increased government borrowing was overwhelming demand for these kind of securities.

But that wasn't the case with the Freddie issues.

"There's still an appetite for these kinds of deals," said Chris Aherns, a strategist with UBS.

Market participants said 10-year issues typically tend to be smaller in size, since the mortgage companies don't need too much funding for such a long term.

Freddie's issue drew about $6 billion to $7 billion of orders, but the company chose to cap the deal size at $3 billion, a source close to the deal said.

The two-year note issue also was well subscribed, market participants said, which prompted the company to lower its risk premium to 71 basis points from the initial 72.5 basis points over comparable Treasury yields.

However, this was smaller than a comparable Fannie Mae (FNM) deal sold in February, which ballooned to $15 billion in size.

Currently, risk premiums on existing agency debt securities are mixed with tighter levels on the short end, and weaker levels on the long end. Fannie's two-year note traded at 65.5 basis points, while Freddie's 4.875% note due 2018 was at 85.5 basis points, according to TradeWeb data.

-By Prabha Natarajan, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-5071;

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