(Bloomberg) — Apple Inc. and General Motors Co. are testing the investment grade debt market Monday. Their borrowings will be a barometer of investors’ appetite for bonds from companies with profits under pressure from President Donald Trump’s tariff offensive.
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The iPhone maker is looking to issue investment-grade debt in as many as four parts, according to a person familiar with the matter. Initial price discussions for the deal’s longest portion, a 10-year note, are in the area of 0.7 percentage point above Treasuries, said the person, who asked not to be identified as the details of the transaction are private.
GM is offering three-year, five-year, and 10-year fixed-rate notes, according to a person familiar with the matter. The longest portion of the offering, a 10-year note, is being marketed at about 2.2 percentage points over the government benchmark, said the person who asked not to be identified.
The two companies are coming to the market after quarterly earnings reports that fed fears of escalating costs from levies. Apple on Thursday warned that tariffs will increase costs by about $900 million this quarter. GM cut its full-year profit outlook last week, just days after initially suspending its earnings guidance for 2025.
Where the bonds finally price and whether or not they are oversubscribed will be one of the first real indications of what investors are willing to buy after Trump’s trade policies sowed confusion across markets.
Already, some analysts are advising against purchasing Apple’s bonds. “We don’t think this offering looks very attractive given the tariff headwinds and significant uncertainty associated with those,” CreditSights Inc. analysts Jordan Chalfin and Michael Pugh wrote in a note Monday.
They expect the deal to be for as much as $6 billion.
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Both deals are the first for the company in at least two years. Apple last issued in 2023 and GM the year prior to that, although GM’s financing arm sold bonds has already this year.
Companies, along with the people who buy and sell their debt, are looking to take advantage of market calm while they can. Corporations are forecasted to sell around $1.5 trillion of high-grade bonds in the US this year. Timing those sales has gotten harder than it’s been in years as markets swing on the policy aboutfaces from the Trump administration.
