3/7/20-year BTPs

Italy will come to the market today to sell 3/7/20-year BTPs with E7.5-9.0bln on offer.

• E2.5-3.0bln of the 0% Jan-24 BTP: This will be the fifth auction of the benchmark 3-year BTP which was launched in October. Bid-to-covers have remained steady between 1.40-1.44x at all four auctions to date. Today's auction is slightly larger than the December and January auctions which saw E2.75bln taken from a range of E2.25-2.75bln.
• E3.5-4.0bln of the 0.25% Mar-28 BTP: This BTP was launched last month and saw the highest volume of bids for any 7-year BTP since auctions for the tenor were introduced in 2014 (the only 7-year operation with bids higher was the inaugural 7-year syndicated issuance in October 2013). It is therefore safe to say that demand is strong for the 7-year sector and this is reflected by the large auction size seen today (which hasn't been seen outside of a launch auction).
• E1.5-2.0bln of the 1.80% Mar-41 BTP: The 1.80% Mar-41 BTP was launched via syndication in September with E10bln sold and with book of E83bln, marking a very successful transaction. Prior to this, the last on-the-run 20-year BTP sold via auction was 7-months ago in July 2020. This auction saw bids of E2.82bln, achievingiving a bid-to-cover of 1.41x.
• Timing: Results will be available shortly after the auction closes at 10:00GMT with a supplementary amount of 20% on offer for each BTP.