The Ministry of Economy completed this Wednesday the last debt tender in pesos of the year. There, the team Luis Caputo placed $5.4 billionan amount insufficient to renew all weekly maturitieswhich amount to about $6.2 billion. In parallel, he carried out a exchange voluntary and anticipated Lecap to clear up part of the hefty January commitments. But, in this second operation, the adhesion of the holders was only 19.47%.
The auction and conversion closed an hour before INDEC reported that the inflation November was 2.4%, a number lower than market expectations (2.8%, according to the median of the Central Bank’s latest REM). In that framework, the cut-off monthly effective interest rates (TEM) paid by Economía for the titles placed were up to 2.93%, more than half a point above the consumer price index (CPI) reported this afternoon.
Debt tender in pesos
This Wednesday was the last debt tender in pesos scheduled for 2024. The Treasury faced weekly maturities of $6.2 trillion distributed between a Lecap (capitalizable letter at a fixed rate) and a Boncer (inflation-indexed bond). If the payments for smaller amounts that must be made in the second half of December are added, the monthly commitments total about $6.5 billion.
Thus, today’s result implied a new partial renewal of the maturities to be covered. The amount awarded in the cash auction represents a refinancing percentage of 87% of weekly payments. Thus, about $800,000 million will be released to the market. In any case, since it is a month of high seasonal demand for money (for the payment of the half bonus, the holidays and the beginning of the vacations), this result was discounted by some analysts.
Specifically, the Secretary of Finance, Pablo Quirnoreported that in the tender, offers were received for a total of $5.95 billion in effective value, of which $5.4 billion were awarded.
The awarded amount was distributed as follows: in the Lecap as of April 2025, $2.36 billion at 2.93% TEM; in Lecap as of July 2025, $928,000 million at 2.81% TEM; in Lecap as of September 2025, $588,000 million at 2.79% TEM; in it Boncap (fixed rate capitalizable bond) as of February 2026, $1.18 trillion at 2.63% TEM; in it Boncer zero coupon as of March 2026, $345,000 million at a CER rate plus 9.24%; at the same time that the Boncer zero coupon tender for March 2027 was declared void.
At the city tables they noticed the high cost that, in the end, Finance paid for the instruments placed. For example, the 2.93% of the shortest Lecap was more than half a percentage point above the inflation reported by the INDEC for November.
The rates validated by the Economy were also well above the yields with which the tendered Lecap closed today’s round.. The most notable gap occurred in the bill as of September 2025: according to calculations by trader Adrián Wibly, the day ended in the secondary market with a TEM just above 2.5%, almost 3 tenths below what the Treasury paid. .
In a dialogue through the X social network with users from the world of finance, Quirno excused himself: “The tender closed before the news”. The thing is that, regardless of whether the officials knew the inflation data in advance, After the publication of the INDEC, there was a strong bullish rally in fixed rate securities in the secondary market, which led to an additional compression of its yields and widened the gap with the Treasury auction values. Yet, This will provide significant extra profits to investors who participated in the bidding.
Exchange of the Lecap S31E5
In parallel to the cash tender, Finance carried out a early exchange of the Lecap S31E5 which expires at the end of next January. The objective was to begin to decompress part of that month’s maturities, which amount to $14 billionaccording to data from the Congressional Budget Office and Personal Investment Portfolio, and about $16 billion, according to estimates by the consulting firm 1816 and Adcap.
In that operation, holders who entered the conversion could choose to exchange their holdings for three Lecaps of longer duration as of May 2025, October 2025 and January 2026. Quirno announced that In the exchange, an effective value equivalent to $660,000 million was awarded, which implied a participation of only 19.47% of the total eligible.
In any case, the official highlighted that a “weighted average life extension of 0.55 years” of that debt was achieved. In addition, he stated that, since the Lecap granted in exchange cut to a weighted annual effective internal rate of return (TIREA) of 38.84%, this meant “a reduction of 51.28 percentage points from the 90.12% that was the TIREA of emission of the instrument S31E5”.
In detail, the holders who entered the exchange obtained $387,000 million in the Lecap as of May 2025 at a TEM of 2.88%, $164,000 million in the Lecap as of October 2025 at 2.74% TEM and $113,000 million in the Lecap at January 2026 at 2.65% TEM. All with higher yields than the closing of the fixed rate curve in the secondary market would suggest.
With the rally they hit after the inflation data, Fixed rate securities rose this Wednesday 0.7% in the short section and 1.7% in the long sectionaccording to a report from the SBS Group. The increase in demand for these instruments was also enhanced after Caputo indicated this afternoon (in a post in which he celebrated the IPC) that the reduction of the rate of the exchange rate from 2% to 1% monthly is “ever closer”.
The thing is The minister’s signal also aims to reinforce bets on the “carry trade” (the mechanism known as the “financial bicycle”) by suggesting that rates in pesos will continue above the rate of devaluation, which would allow the juicy gains in hard currency to be extended. For the Government, the “carry” incentive is a strategy to maintain the flow of foreign currency that allowed the BCRA to obtain a significant purchasing balance of dollars in recent months, despite the deficit in the exchange current account.
Source: Ambito
