Prospects for Mexico’s state oil company
The slump in crude prices is dimming the prospects for Mexico’s state oil company after investors snapped up the bonds following moves to open the industry.
Petroleos Mexicanos’s dollar-denominated notes have returned just 0.7 percent since the end of September, less than the average for investment-grade corporate debt tracked by Bloomberg, as oil plunged 14 percent. In the first nine months of the year, the bonds gained 8.8 percent, about 1.5 times the average, as the government approved rules to end the nation’s energy monopoly.
While Pemex’s debt is implicitly backed by the government, the extra yield investors demand to hold its bonds due in 2035 instead of comparable sovereign notes is close to a seven-month high as the decline in oil threatens to reduce the company’s revenue. President Enrique Pena Nieto says the legal changes to let foreign companies pump crude in Mexico for the first time since the 1930s will help reduce Pemex’s tax burden and attract $250 billion in foreign direct investment by 2018.
“This is certainly taking a bit of shine off the story,” Kieran Curtis, an emerging-market debt manager at Standard Life Investments Ltd., which oversees $271 billion including Pemex and Mexico’s sovereign dollar bonds, said in a telephone interview from London. “Investors had been hoping for big real inflows in terms of FDI into the oil sector.”
Mexico’s mix of crude oil has followed the decline in prices globally, dropping a four-year last week, as anemic global growth damps demand while production in the U.S. from hydraulic fracturing bolsters supplies.

