New 3y BTP / 7y BTP

Italy will come to the market this morning to launch a new 3-year BTP and re-open its 7-year BTP via auction. The MEF announced that due to the recent BTP Green syndication, no maturity of over 10-years would be sold at today's auction.

• 0% Apr-24 BTP: The new 3-year BTP will see a large auction size today, with E4.5-5.0bln on offer. This is the largest auction of a 3-year BTP since the launch of the 0.30% Aug-23 BTP in June 2020 (the 0% Jan-24 BTP never saw an auction this large). That June auction was well received with a bid-to-cover of 1.37x, and more recent auctions between October and January had seen fairly consistent bid-to-cover ratios of 1.40-1.44x. Last month's 3-year BTP auction saw a higher bid-to-cover of 1.66x, the highest seen at a 3-year auction since February 2019. Despite the large size we look for a successful auction today.
• 0.25% Mar-28 BTP: E2.5-3.0bln of the 7-year BTP will be on offer this morning. This will be the second reopening of the issue after it was launched in January and reopened in February. This is also the smallest auction of the issue so far, with the launch seeing E4.5bln sold and the February reopening E4.0bln sold (with a further E0.8bln in the second round). The auctions saw bid-to-covers of 1.43x and 1.47x respectively.
• Timing: Results will be available shortly after the auction closes at 10:00GMT/11:00CET.