Some might argue issuers need to know what sort of premium they are likely to pay to work out how much a new issue might cost them and so help them decide when to push their deal into the market.
Maybe so for the opportunistic issuer trying to steal every last basis point on the table, but a treasurer who comes to market several times a year, or one who has a specific need for funds, is surely held to account by his superiors on the overall execution of the deal.
Once you have made it past the argument as to whether it should be a new issue concession or a new issue premium (our view is that if you add it to a spread then it is a premium), how should it be calculated?
In a utopian, liquid, frequently traded bond market, where issuers have lovely smooth secondary curves, we would all know where we stand with NIPs. But those perfect shapes don’t exist.
Secondary spreads become stale. Issuers go beyond their existing bonds. So should you use the recent deals you might have used as comparables to price the bond? Will they have bedded down enough in the secondary market or will they still contain some of their own NIP?
It is a knotty question with no clear answer. So although NIPs certainly show the way the market is going, the absolute numbers are not the be all and end all when it comes to judging the success of a deal.