Maturity Wall Shrinks $196 Billion in 15 Months: Credit Markets
Posted by on April 13th, 2010
April 13, 2010, 12:11 AM EDT
April 13 (Bloomberg) — Record U.S. junk bond sales and a rally in the leveraged loan market are chipping away at a $1.2 trillion wall of maturities that’s threatened to cause a surge in defaults.
Cablevision Systems Corp., the New York-area cable-TV provider, sold $1.25 billion of bonds yesterday to refinance notes and has extended loan maturities. Since the start of last year, borrowers with high-yield bonds and leveraged loans maturing through 2015 have cut the amount due in the next four years by $196 billion, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.
the past year’s recovery in credit markets prompted sales of $239.3 billion in bonds with speculative ratings, reducing the risk that debt-laden companies would be trapped as the securities matured. the 12-month global default rate for junk debt fell to 9.9 percent in the first quarter from 13 percent at the end of 2009 and will drop to 2.4 percent a year from now, New York-based Moody’s Investors Service said in a report.
“The openness of the high-yield bond market has been the major force here,” said Gautam Kakodkar, a New York-based credit strategist at Barclays Plc. “What we’ve seen so far is an incredible flow of money to high-yield bonds and loans, creating a lot of pent up demand.”
Leveraged loan prices surged to the highest in almost two years and default rates have plunged. the S&P/LSTA US Leveraged Loan 100 Index rose 0.12 cent to 92.37 cents on the dollar yesterday, the highest since June 22, 2008. Borrowers have $537 billion of leveraged loans due between 2012 and 2014, or 77 percent of all loans outstanding, JPMorgan analysts led by Peter Acciavatti wrote April 9 in a report.
Junk Sales
Junk sales are “really mitigating that wall of maturity risk,” Martin Fridson, chief executive officer of New York- based money manager Fridson Investment Advisors, said yesterday in a telephone interview.
Cash flowing into high-yield mutual funds helped provide demand for record junk issuance, as investors bet on riskier assets while interest rates are at record lows. Funds had $417 million of inflows last week, the seventh-straight increase, and loan funds had $290 million, the 19th in a row and the longest stretch ever, JPMorgan said. High-yield, or junk, bonds are ranked lower than Baa3 by Moody’s and below BBB- by Standard & Poor’s.
High-yield bond spreads tightened 14 basis points last week to 568 basis points as of April 9, Bank of America Merrill Lynch index data show. the spread on junk-rated securities narrowed to 565 basis points on April 6, the tightest since Dec. 27, 2007.
Borrowing Costs
the extra yield investors demand to own corporate bonds rather than government debt was at 146 basis points yesterday, or 1.46 percentage point, the lowest since November 2007, the Merrill Global Broad Market Corporate Index shows. Yields averaged 4.013 percent, the lowest since March 30.
Bank of China’s Hong Kong unit, Hyundai Motor Co. and a unit of Telefonica SA, the Spanish wireless provider, tapped U.S. bond investors as so-called Yankee issuers made up a record share of dollar-denominated debt offerings, data compiled by Bloomberg show. SLM Corp., the student lender known as Sallie Mae, sold $1.22 billion of bonds backed by student-loans, according to a person familiar with the sale. Lowe’s Cos. issued $1 billion of notes.
Yankee Bond Sales
Bank of China (Hong Kong) ltd., a unit of the country’s third-largest lender by market value, sold $900 million of additional 5.55 percent bonds due in 2020. Hyundai, South Korea’s biggest automaker, issued $500 million of five-year notes through its capital services unit, its first benchmark sale in the currency since October, Bloomberg data show. Madrid- based Telefonica Emisiones SAU was marketing $3.5 billion of debt.
Yankee issuers sold $6.7 billion of U.S. investment-grade bonds last week, or 60 percent of the total, after a record $132 billion in the first quarter, or 52 percent of all offerings, the data show. that compares with $95.3 billion, or 25 percent of all U.S. investment-grade sales, in the year-earlier quarter.
Sallie Mae’s offering was the largest of asset-backed securities since the U.S. government withdrew from the market last month. the top-rated securities maturing in 3.34 years yield 40 basis points more than the 30-day London interbank offered rate, said the person, who declined to be identified because the terms aren’t public.
Corporate Bond Issuance
Daimler AG, the world’s second-biggest maker of luxury vehicles, is marketing $992.8 million of bonds backed by auto loans; Deere & Co., the world’s largest maker of farm machinery, plans to sell $708.2 million of securities backed by equipment loans, according to people familiar with those sales.
Lowe’s, the No.2 U.S. home-improvement retailer, sold $500 million of 10-year notes and $500 million of 30-year bonds, tapping the U.S. market for the first time since 2007, Bloomberg data show. Cablevision sold $750 million of 8-year senior notes and $500 million of 10-year bonds, as U.S. corporate bond issuance yesterday reached at least $7.85 billion.
Credit ratings on investment-grade companies were cut about three times for every two that were raised in the first quarter, Standard & Poor’s said in a report.
‘Merger or Acquisition’
“We are seeing a bit of re-leveraging on the part of relatively stronger issuers,” S&P credit analyst Andrew Watt wrote in the report yesterday. “A closer look at the ratings activity for investment-grade or near investment-grade issuers shows that about half of the downgrades in this category were due to a merger or acquisition.”
among speculative grade companies, upgrades were twice downgrades, according to S&P.
U.S. home-loan bonds without government-backed guarantees rose for a second week, after falling as other credit markets gained in February and March. the most-senior securities backed by option adjustable-rate mortgages rose 1 cent on the dollar to 56 cents last week, compared with a record low of 33 cents in March 2009 and 58 cents in early January, adding to a similar gain the previous week, according to Barclays Plc.
some subprime-loan securities have jumped almost 10 percent since mid-March.
the cost to protect against default on corporate bonds fell around the world as a rescue plan to stem Greece’s budget woes eased concern of a wider crisis. the Markit CDX North America Investment Grade Index Series 14 declined 1.3 basis point to a mid-price of 84.1 basis points at 5:05 p.m. in New York, according to Markit Group ltd. the index is at the lowest level since April 6.
Bondholder Protection
Credit-default swaps on Greek sovereign debt tumbled 62 basis points to 364, according to CMA DataVision at 3:30 p.m. in London yesterday. the Markit iTraxx Crossover Index of swaps on 50 European companies dropped 8 basis points to 410, the lowest since March 17, JPMorgan Chase & Co. prices show.
Today the Markit iTraxx Japan index rose 2 basis points to 89.5 basis points in Tokyo, while the Markit iTraxx Asia index rose 0.5 basis point to 89, Deutsche Bank AG prices show. the Markit iTraxx Australia index fell 0.5 basis point to 78 basis points.
Maturing debt was chiseled down by a record $161.6 billion of junk offerings in 2009 and $77.7 billion this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“Companies that have these maturities in 2012, 2013 and 2014, they still need to generate top line growth, but market conditions have clearly eased,” said Diane Vazza, head of S&P’s global fixed income research. “The level of concern has eased as well.”
–With assistance from Bryan Keogh in London, Tim Catts, Sarah Mulholland, Jody Shenn and Craig Trudell in New York, and Sarah McDonald and Ed Johnson in Sydney, and Tom Kohn in Hong Kong. Editors: Charles W. Stevens, Alan Goldstein
To contact the reporter on this story: John Detrixhe in New York at jdetrixhe1@bloomberg.net; Emre Peker in New York at epeker2@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alan Goldstein at agoldstein5@bloomberg.net; Faris khan at fkahn33@bloomberg.net.
Maturity Wall Shrinks $196 Billion in 15 Months: Credit Markets
Recent Comments