Featured Municipal Bond Issue, Week of 11/27/2017: Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin – Revenue Bonds – $273 Million
This week’s featured bond comes from the State of Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Health and Educational Facilities Authority is issuing $273 million in revenue bonds on behalf of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Inc. the week of November 27, 2017. These revenue bonds are being issued as a single, negotiated series. The purpose of these bonds is to refund previously issued revenue bonds issued in 2008, and to pay the cost of acquisition, construction, renovation, and equipping of health system facilities, including construction of an addition to its existing hospital facility.
Security for the bonds is payments, income, and revenues from the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, Inc. and the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin Foundation, Inc. These entities constitute the “obligated group” to repay the interest and principle on the bonds, and their place in the overall health system hierarchy is illustrated below.
Further details on the purposes, tax-status, and security, as well as other matters pertaining to these Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin revenue bonds can be found in the preliminary official statement, available on MuniOS.
The Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin serves the State of Wisconsin. As of October 2017, the State of Wisconsin has an unemployment rate of 2.8%, which is 1.3% lower than the national rate for October, and 0.9% lower than at the same time in 2016. The chart below (click to expand) shows the State of Wisconsin and U.S. unemployment rates for the past ten years. MuniNet provides this data and more, easily accessible, for all 50 states and each Metropolitan Statistical Area in the country, in our Employment Database.
Provided at left (click to expand) is a quick snapshot of financial characteristics of the Children’s Hospital and Health System, Inc. (of Wisconsin) as of 12/31/2016, compared with the medians for other U.S. Cities for 2015-2016, courtesy of Merritt Research Services, LLC. Merritt has many of the sector medians publicly available and regularly updated on their Benchmark Central page. (Merritt believes the data to be reliable but does not make any representations as to its accuracy or completeness). In addition to the Merritt information related to the featured bond, more information can be found on our municipal bond calendar,city, state, and county pages, and our employment database.
These facts and numbers are for informational purposes, and should not be considered an official disclosure for potential investors. Investors should consult the official statement. None of the information provided should be construed as a recommendation by MuniNet Guide, MuniNet LLC, Merritt Research Services LLC, or any of their employees. Information and analysis is for informational purposes only.
by Jeffrey L Garceau