Q3 2023 Sustainability Muni Recap

S&P Global Market Intelligence Global Markets Group's municipal bond analysts have reviewed Q2 2023 municipal bond new issue data and analytics to identify the quarter's sustainable issuance trends. During the third quarter of 2023, sustainable municipal bonds issuance (including corporate issues) declined 8% from $12.4B in Q3 2022 to $11.4B in Q3 2023 while the overall muni issuance grew by 2% Y/Y, from $100.0B in Q3 2022 to $101.6B in Q3 2023, resulting in the second consecutive quarter of deceleration of sustainable municipal issuance.

Sustainable Issuance by Type

Social bonds represented the largest share of sustainable issuance, accounting for $5.3B, or 41% of sustainable issuance in Q3 2023. The largest social bond issued during Q3 2023 was The City of New York City's $700M General Obligation Bonds, Fiscal 2024 Series B, Taxable Social Bonds, Subseries B-1 priced on 9/15/2023.

Sustainable Issuance by Coupon Maturity

Sustainable Issuance by Coupon and Maturity

Sustainable Issuance by Verifier, Type, and Maturity

Sustainable Issuance by Sector

The Housing sector represented the greatest portion of sustainable bonds by sector with $4.2B issued, led by the Washington Housing Finance Commission's $328M Municipal Certificates Series 2023-1 Class A (Social Certificates) and $328M Municipal Certificates Series 2023-1 Class X (Social Certificates).

Sustainable Issuance by State

CA led the sustainable issuance in Q3 2023 with over $2.8B of issuance.

Verifier vs Self

Majority of sustainable issuance was third-party verified in Q3 2023, with Kestrel Verifiers accounting for the bulk of the third-party verified issuance.

Top 10 Underwriters for Sustainable Issuance by Par Amount

Sustainable Issuance by Tax Status

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This article was published by S&P Global Market Intelligence and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.