Featured Municipal Bond in the Market, Week of 07/18/2016: Drexel University
This week’s featured bond comes from the state of Pennsylvania. Drexel University is scheduled to issue $112 million in revenue refunding bonds the week of July 18, 2016. The purpose of the bonds are to refund Series 2005, Series 2007, and Series 2007A Bonds. The bonds are limited obligations of the Pennsylvania Higher Educational Facilities Authority. The Authority has no taxing power. However, the loan agreement is a general obligation of the University, and the full faith and credit of the University is pledged. More details on purposes, security, and other matters can the found in the official statement, provided by MuniOS. Drexel is located in Philadelphia, and the current (May 2016) unemployment rate for the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington Metropolitan Statistical Area is 5.1%, which is 0.4% higher than the national rate for May 2016 of 4.7%.
Provided at left is a quick snapshot of financial characteristics of Drexel University, along with the sector medians for higher education institutions, 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.