Month: August 2024

Shiloh:

Hi,
I’m Shiloh Bates and welcome to the CLO Investor podcast. CLO stands for
collateralized loan obligations, which are securities backed by pools of
leveraged loans. In this podcast, we discuss current news in the CLO industry,
and I interview key market players. Today I’m speaking with Allan Schmitt, the Head CLO Banker at Wells Fargo. Allan has structured many of the CLOs I’ve invested in, and at my prior firm, Allan was part of the team that provided our business development company, an asset-based lending facility, or ABL, and ABL is just leveraged against a pool of leveraged loans. As you’ll hear during the podcast, Wells is active both in lending against diversified portfolios of loans and arranging their securitizations through the CLO market. I asked Allan to come on the podcast to discuss rated feeders, which are a new flavor of CLO that is growing in popularity. If you’re enjoying the podcast, please remember to Share, Like, and Follow. And now my conversation with Allan Schmidt. Allan, welcome to the podcast.

Allan:

Thanks, Shiloh. Excited to be here.

Shiloh:

Is it a pretty slow August on the CLO banking desk?

Allan:

I think most people might wish it was, but it’s definitely
been an interesting summer across the board. I think we’ve seen, obviously with
CLO spreads tightening, really across the balance of the year, has created
really an overwhelming number of reset and refinance transactions for the
market. So not only Wells, but across the board, you’re seeing 10, 15 deals a
week come across the transom. So I think everywhere from the investor side, as
I’m sure you’re aware, to the underwriter side, to the manager side, to the
lawyers, the rating agencies, I think everyone is really working through the
screws to get transactions through the pipelines here in August. So…

Shiloh:

It definitely seems that way. We’ve known each other for
quite some time. And maybe you could tell our listeners a little bit about your
background and how somebody becomes a CLO banker.

Allan:

Sure. So I’ve fortunately been in the industry around CLOs
my entire career, which dates back to 2006. So started right before the global
financial crisis. Certainly as an analyst at that time, it was an interesting
period to really begin to get involved in the market and certainly had a front
row seat to a lot of the activity that was happening at that time. My entire
career has been with Wells and predecessor firms, so I’ve been fortunate from
that perspective and as we moved out of the global financial crisis, was able
to be really on the front lines as well as we built the business at Wells
around private credit lending, around CLOs, and really was instrumental in
terms of growing my knowledge base, growing both internal and external
relationships during that period. So obviously where I sit today in my current
role, lead both our CLO effort across both broadly syndicated and middle market
CLOs as well as our private credit lending business there. And as we’ll talk
about more recently expanded our offering underrated feeders as just an adjunct
to what we’re able to do for our private credit clients. So obviously a
longstanding period of time here in CLOs, but excited about it.

Shiloh:

So what are some of the key character traits of somebody
who’s successful in CLO banking?

Allan:

So I think it’s a number of things. I think first and
foremost it’s being a relationship manager, so someone that’s communicative
both to internal counterparties, but even more importantly to clients and
investors like yourself, folks that have the ability to think dynamically on
their feet. CLOs are not an overly complex structure, but they do require the
ability to put pieces together both from a structure perspective but also the
different constituents, both equity manager investors. And so being able to
play that process effectively and walk out of transactions where everybody
feels it was successful I think is a key piece. So someone who can manage that
process and communicate effectively is critical and certainly is depending on
where we’re hiring people as folks move up the ladder, really being able to
develop and institutionalize a lot of the client relationships that we have in
the market.

Shiloh:

And then for the junior people you hire, are they spending
a lot of their time doing financial models? So accuracy is the key
differentiator there?

Allan:

Yeah, I think attention to detail, right, to your point,
and being able to both be intellectual around structure, documentation, et
cetera is obviously critical. Obviously it’s a learning curve that folks have
and folks get into, but someone that has that ability to grasp both the legal
and structural aspects of the business quickly, and obviously having that
strong attention to detail, is obviously important as well.

Shiloh:

And so as you become more senior in the CLO business, is
somebody like you still in the weeds with the modeling or are you reviewing at
a high level the work that’s done by others?

Allan:

I spend a lot of my time, I think on the client
development side of things, the more strategic side, whether that’s when we’re
bringing a CLO transaction, helping to formulate the distribution process, the
distribution strategy, certainly on the structuring side as well, helping to
provide ideas and thoughts around different structural nuances or things we can
focus on within specific transactions. So while not in the weeds punching
numbers necessarily, certainly maintaining a pulse on what’s happening in the
market and how we can create better structures for our clients to optimize from
an ultimate execution perspective.

Shiloh:

So I think there’s around 15 or so different CLO banks out
there. How is Wells differentiated from some of the others?

Allan:

There’s certainly a lot of players in the market around
syndicated CLOs and even becoming more around middle market CLOs. I think from
our seat, we try to differentiate ourselves a couple ways. One, I alluded to
the bAllance sheet that Wells provides into the private credit space, and I
think that has an extension into the broad syndicated market as well. And it’s
not just about providing bAllance sheet, but it’s providing that capital in a
way that is beneficial to client and can help drive business for the platform
holistically. But it’s also around providing bAllance sheet on a consistent
basis. I think what I mean by that is our approach to lending over the course
of the last 15 to 20 years has not changed materially. I think we’ve always
been an active participant or a leading participant in the private credit
space. So our clients have confidence, have an understanding in terms of how we
approach the market.

So that consistency, we obviously want to adapt and evolve
as the market evolves, but our ability to maintain consistency across different
markets, whether it’s volatility, as we saw earlier this week or what have you,
we’re able to consistently provide that capital to clients both in a strategic
and customizable way. I think the other is, it sounds simple, but from a
customer service perspective, the relationship management perspective, our
ability to help clients on the financing side for a lot of their funds from
start to finish is critically important. When we think about a lot of the funds
that have been raised, they need multiple forms of financing, whether that’s
traditional ABL financing, CLO financing.

Shiloh:

An ABL is an asset backed loan.

Allan:

That’s right. Wells is providing the senior financing on a
pool of loans, so substituting a CLO, AAA, AA for a bank, ABL financing.

Shiloh:

So there the point you’re making is that Wells actually
likes to lend against these loans, so you’re going to require some third party
equity obviously, but maybe before there’s ACL O, there’s a warehouse set up
where somebody again puts up some equity and wells starts advancing the debt
there and maybe there’s a CLO takeout at some point or maybe there’s not. And
either way, Wells likes to take the senior risk, if you will, against a pool of
senior secured loans. Is that how to think about it?

Allan:

That’s exactly right. When we think about our client base,
a lot of the financing to private credit is not necessarily in CLOs, it’s in
that ABL structure or that bank financing structure. And so we’re able, and we
like that product, we like that lending, its core to what we do as a business
and a platform. So we’re able to provide that to clients, but we’re also able
to facilitate and think about strategically the execution of CLOs for clients
as well. So all of that from a relationship management perspective, all of that
sits within our team. So we have the ability to really provide clients with
ideas and thoughts around the best form of financing for their funds.

Shiloh:

At a previous firm, as you know, I was the counterparty to
a Wells line of credit where Wells was lending against a diversified portfolio
of middle market loans, and I think generally an advance rate of 65 or 70%. Do
you have any sense for why it is that that business works for a bank like Wells
and other firms may not find that business to be as appealing?

Allan:

I think it’s interesting. I think we’ve seen other
institutions I’d say come around or become more active and engaged in that
senior lending there. So I think when your question on how does Wells
differentiate, we differentiate because we have consistency and a long-term
process around that business. But I think other banks and institutions are
active in it, are growing in it, and it’s becoming a more competitive space
there.

Shiloh:

So one of the things I’ve noticed in the CLO equity trade
is that before the CLO begins its life, often there’s this warehouse period
where some equity is contributed and loans are acquired using leverage from a
bank and at other banks, that warehouse is really something they’re providing,
really they want it to be as short as possible. They don’t really like the
risk, they want you to be in a warehouse for a couple months, then they’re
ready to do a CLO and then they earn a fee, the bank does. And then there’s no
real exposure to the CLO after that. In some of the warehouses I’ve done with
you guys in the past, the vibe is you put up equity, Wells like lending against
the loans as a senior lender, and we can do a CLO takeout soon or later or
maybe never. And it seems you guys are fine with that, which I think is
different from some of the other shops.

Allan:

I think it certainly obviously depends on the situation
and the structure of the motivation, if you will, of that vehicle at the
outset. But to your point, we are able to be patient. Again, we approach it
very much from a client relationship type perspective and want to find the best
takeout and the best long-term structure for the client. I think we certainly
want to do CLOs, we certainly want to earn fees on the backend, but in certain
structures we’re not here to force the takeout and want to develop partnerships
for the long-term. And I think we’ve done that over the years and you can see
that obviously in some of the repeat managers that we partner with, but
definitely take a longer term view of that warehouse to take out than some
others.

Shiloh:

So then in the CLO market, the three biggest categories
for CLOs would be European versus US, and then, in the US, and by the way, we
don’t do anything in Europe. And then domestically it’s broadly syndicated CLOs
and middle market are the big two. Could you maybe just compare and contrast a
little bit the structural differences between the two and then from there maybe
we could build into the rated feeders as well?

Allan:

Definitely, and I think when you think about those two
markets, probably syndicated and middle market CLOs, at this point, there’s not
a lot of structural differences between them. You certainly have similar rated
notes, you have similar reinvestment periods. BSL might be five years, middle
market might be four years, albeit there are middle market CLOs now getting
done with five years. I think the bigger difference really when you think about
the two markets is the underlying motivations for transactions. So middle
market CLOs are used typically by managers in most senses as financing vehicles
for larger fund complexes. We talked about the ABL business that Wells does and
others do, which is a big form of financing for these larger fund structures.
And CLOs are another form of financing. So where broadly syndicated CLOs are
going to be much more of a true arbitrage structure, where the manager is
partnering with equity and are going out and buying loans in the secondary
market, buying loans in the primary market from large institutional banks. The
middle market is much more of a longer term financing vehicle where they’re
originating assets on a direct basis over a long period of time and turning
those assets out. So the motivation that you see between the two is probably
the biggest difference there.

Shiloh:

So in your terminology, an arbitrage CLO is one where
there’s a third party equity investor who’s signing up, likes the risk return
profile of the investment, and that’s who the end investor is there. And then
for middle market, a lot of times it’s a financing trade. So by that there may
be a BDC or a GPLP fund with a diversified portfolio of loans and it’s
advantageous to them to seek leverage against that because it’s long-term
leverage done at attractive rates and that enables the BDC or GPLP fund to increase
their return on equity. But in a structure like that, the equity is owned a
hundred percent by the BDC or the fund. There’s no third party equity, there’s
no Flat Rocks involved in that case.

Allan:

That’s right, and I think that’s also when you think about
one of the bigger differences between the two BSL and middle market CLOs, BSL
is typically always going to issue down through double B rated notes or all the
way through equity and middle market Cs because of that financing structure for
BDC or a fund, they may only issue down through AA or single A because the
leverage profile of those vehicles or how much leverage those vehicles are able
to run is meaningfully less. So that’s why a lot of times you won’t see
mezzanine or non-investment grade tranches issued for middle market CLOs.

Shiloh:

So the broadly syndicated CLO might be levered, was it 10
times on average, where the middle market might be leveraged seven and a half
times. So less leverage there. And then the CCC basket is another big
differentiator. In broadly syndicated, you get a seven a half percent triple
CCC bucket. In middle market, you get 17 point a half on average. Of course
there are some differences in deals and that gives the manager more flexibility
because the middle market loans tend to not be as favorably rated by Moody’s or
S & P. And then you pointed out the middle market CLO might have a four
year reinvestment period, so a little shorter than the five years you get in
broadly syndicated. I think those are the key differences. Another minor one
would just be reinvesting after the reinvestment period ends. So in broadly
syndicated CLOs, whenever you get unscheduled principal proceeds, whenever
those come back to you, which is most loan repayments are unscheduled anyways,
then a lot of times you can reinvest that, subject to some constraints in the
deals. Whereas for middle market, actually the reinvestment period ends. It’s
very simple. There’s no more reinvesting. It sounds like a subtle difference,
but I think it does actually matter in terms of how long the deal will be
outstanding for and it matters for equity returns. I think. If you think about
the aaa, which is the biggest financing cost and broadly syndicated, the loan
to value through AAA is going to be about 65% would you say, or

Allan:

62 to 65%

Shiloh:

62 to 65. And then for middle market it’s going to be

Allan:

55 to 58.

Shiloh:

So it sounds like you get a lot more equity or juniorcapital in the middle market. And then in terms of your banking team, you havea middle market team and a broadly syndicated team, or these are similarproducts and everybody works on the different deals?

Allan:

As we’ve talked about, there’s similar enough products where we generically have everybody working on similar deals. We do have some senior members of the team more from a relationship perspective that are specialized in either BSL or middle market as they think about developing client relationships and whatnot. But from a structuring deal execution
perspective, we view there to be enough similarities between the products and certainly from an investor perspective as we think about distribution of the products, that there’s enough similarity where the same individuals are able to function there.

Shiloh:

And then one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the podcast this week was just to talk about rated feeders a little bit. So that’s a new flavor of CLO in the market. What are the basics of a rated feeder?

Allan:

So a rated feeder is a structured credit vehicle where, as opposed to being secured by underlying assets directly, as a CLO would, you’re secured by the LP interest of a private credit fund. And that private credit fund can really be of any type. It can be direct lending, it can be asset-based lending. It can be all sorts of different types of private credit assets, but for the most part, most of them have been done off of middle market direct lending assets. The structure has been utilized for many years. As you think about insurance companies who want to make investments in private credit funds, they’re able to do so through a rated feeder structure in a more capital-efficient way. So again, the underlying asset that is getting levered or is getting tranched out is an LP interest of a private credit fund. So when you think about that GPLP structure, LP fund where you have multiple different institutional investors making LP commitments, some of them might be insurance companies that want to gain access to that fund.

So for them to do that through a rated feeder structure, they’re able to do so in a more capital efficient way. And the reason for that is the leverage profile of a lot of these funds, as we talked about earlier, is only one or two times leverage. So they’re run at fairly low leverage points. And so while the rating agencies are able to get comfortable by tranching out that LP interest and adding incremental rating levels to that for any investor, but predominantly insurance companies to receive incremental capital efficiency there. So historically to this point or to recently, insurance companies have bought vertical strips as we call them, buying a AA, single A, triple B in equity of that rated feeder. And so they’re buying the entire portion for that capital efficiency. But most recently we’ve really thought about that structure on a more horizontal basis, which is more akin to middle market CLOs where we’re using that same radium methodology that insurance have used in trying that out, but selling that to different investors at different risk return profiles there. So instead of one investor buying it all, we might be selling AA, single A to different investors.

Shiloh:

So I think the structural setup here is, imagine your rated feeder, let’s call it 300 million, and let’s say the underlying fund is BDC just to make it simple. Then the rated feeder takes the 300 million that it raises from third parties, it injects that into the BDC, and the BDC over time will pay dividends up to the rated feeder in the dividends on the 300 million that arrived at the BDC. But in the rated feeder structure, as those dividends get passed up to their rated feeder, instead of having all the dividends just paid out rata to the 300 million of equity, instead the setup is the tranching that you mentioned, where first there’s a AAA or AA or whatever it is, they have the first priority on the dividends from the BDC down the line, and then there’s an equity investor and the rated feeder as well, and they’re the person who gets paid whatever remains.

So again, the total income into the rated feeder is the distribution from the BDC, and it just split up, senior to junior, with equity taking the remainder. One of the reasons these exist, I think to your point, is that if you’re an insurance company, you’re basically investing 300 million into the BDC. So the insurance company can either end up with a $300 million limited partnership agreement or LP investment in a BDC, or they can end up with 300 million of investments in a series of securities rated AAA or AA, whatever it is down the line to double B, and they’ll get just much more favorable regulatory treatment for that. So if you’re an insurance company, you don’t want to own a lot of equity, you want to own as many senior rated securities as you can.

Allan:

That’s exactly right. When you think about the rated feeder, especially to your point on the waterfall and how cash is distributed, it doesn’t look that dissimilar than any other structured vehicle where cash is being distributed down through the priority of payments or through the different ratings to the equity at the bottom. I think the difference obviously is there’s effectively one asset. So one LP interest to the fund is distributing that cash into the vehicle that’s getting distributed versus a CLO that might have a hundred unique assets where the cash is coming in. So the investors are really one step removed from the assets than they would be in a middle market CLO. But you have as an lp, as the rated feeder acts as an individual LP of the fund, it has the same rights that any other LP would have in terms of access to the assets.

Shiloh:

So then I understand the rationale for why an insurance company would want to use this structure, but are you also seeing interest from other investors that don’t have regulatory capital that would care about a Moody’s or an S & P rating?

Allan:

Certainly. So obviously the insurance company has been the predominant of the product there, but we have seen an expansion of that beyond insurance companies, not so much as to where they’re focused on capital charge
treatment, but investors are more focused on where they can find increased
spread or increased return really within the same asset class. So the ability
for banks or asset managers or hedge funds or different CLO investors, the
ability for them to buy a more structured complex vehicle is going to come with it a higher spread or a higher return. So we have seen a lot of investors,
we’ve seen spread compression across markets, look at rated feeder notes and look at these structures as another way to really gain access to the asset
class where there’s the ability to garner incremental spread through that level
of complexity through that level of illiquidity there. So we’ve obviously done
a few of these to date and have probably seen the investor base on each
subsequent one continue to grow and broaden and are seeing broad interests and growth there.

Shiloh:

So the most senior securities that are issued by the rated feeder, are they actually rated AAA or is it more of AA, single A, because you are, as you said, one step removed from the assets?

Allan:

So the most senior tranche in rated feeders is really AA. Most of them are either that single A or AA is the most senior rating. It’s certainly because of the one step removed from the assets. The other piece is the fund that sits above the rated feeder is also running leverage. So there’s leverage at that fund level, usually in the form of a bank ABL as we talked about. It could be in the form of CLO tranche, it could be in some other unsecured debt tranche, but there is some form of leverage typically at the fund level that sits above the rated feeder. So that’s another reason why obviously, from a rated entity perspective, they factor that fund level leverage into the rating as well.

Shiloh:

So then let’s just compare for a second, owning the AA of middle market CLO versus the AA of the rated feeder. So in the rated feeder, you do have this ABL sitting at the fund or the BDC level that has first priority or that’s in the first security position. If you’re sitting at the rated feeder, all the management fees and incentive fees that are paid to the manager of the BDC, those are taken out before any distributions are sent up to the rated feeder. So essentially those become senior to you even if you’re AA, whereas in the typical middle market aa, the only expenses you have ahead of you would be AAA interest and a senior management fee. Maybe there’s a little bit of other operating expenses, but it wouldn’t be material. So that rated feeder AA is removed from the assets, has an ABL in front of it, but also the management and incentive fees of the fund take priority as well.

Allan:

That’s exactly right. I think the biggest difference there though is the attachment or the leverage point of the ABL of that senior debt to the rated feeder. So to our earlier conversation on comparing middle market CLOs, when you look at the attachment of a AAA on the middle market, CLO, that’s all the way down to 55 to 58% advance rate. A lot of the rated feeders, certainly on the AA side that are being issued, the senior debt or the ABL is
only the 40 to 50% attachment. So you’re adding incremental subordination
through that senior ABL to the rated feeder to make up or offset some of those incremental expenses and fees that you alluded to.

Shiloh:

So I elicit the cons of the rated feed feeder AA, but the amount of junior capital that supports that is much higher than in the CLO. At the end of the day, they’re both rated AA, so presumably they would’ve the same credit quality.

Allan:

That’s the idea. And I think there’s obviously going to be pros and cons of each, but I think to your point, one of the biggest pros is the added subordination that exists for the rated feeder notes. In comparison to middle market CLOs.

Shiloh:

Let’s maybe just also compare owning middle market equity directly versus owning it in the rated feeder. What are some of the key structural differences there?

Allan:

So I think some of the key differences when you think about rated feeders to middle market CLOs is I like to think about rated feeders, really, they combine both the warehouse period for a middle market CLO and the term securitization. So when you think about a middle market CLO, as we
talked about, there’s a warehouse period that exists that equity has to come
into, the manager has to originate assets and you’re ramping assets over an
extended period of time, and then ultimately waiting for the securitization or
the long-term financing structure of that pool of loans or what’s the most
optimal time to do that. On the rated feeder side, it really combines both of
that warehouse structure as well as the term structure into one. And it does
that obviously through the fact that the notes are issued in delayed draw form. So the senior notes integrated feeder are typically done in delayed draw
fashion. So that allows the portfolio of the fund to be ramped up on a consistent basis, but also being able to draw that leverage as assets are contributed, whereas a middle market CLO is going to be fully funded or fully drawn day one. So that’s I think one of the bigger difference. The other is when you think about middle market assets, there’s a large delayed draw and revolver component that comes alongside those assets, whether those are being contributed to the fund or a middle market CLO, the manager has to find solutions for those. And in a middle market CLO, you’ll typically find

portfolios anywhere from five to 10% in delayed draws and revolvers, and that’s a drag to equity at the end of the day. In terms of having to cash
collateralize a portion of those assets in the vehicle. With the rated feeder,
you’re going to have a similar delayed draw and revolver component to the
portfolios. But the ABL line, the bank ABL line that we’ve talked about
functions as a revolver, so it’s more of an optimal solution to fund those
assets. So there’s going to be less negative drag or less negative carry on the
fund and ultimately the rate of feeder than there would be in a middle market
CLO.

Shiloh:

One other structural difference that we haven’t really talked about is just that in the middle market CLO, it’s almost exclusively firstly in senior secured loans. So the spreads are going to vary a little bit, but it’s three months sofa plus five to five and three quarters on the high end, whereas in the rated feeder, the underlying BDC or fund might be something more like 85% first lien, and then there’ll be a fair amount of second lien or pref or some other funky stuff there. The asset pools do look a little bit different.

Allan:

For sure, the rated feeder depending on the fund, but most of the funds that are utilizing the structure, there’s a lot more asset flexibility associated with it. So there’s the ability not only at the outset, at the original ramp, to be opportunistic in certain maybe non-first lien assets or recurring revenue, which are a big part of a lot of direct lenders. Today is obviously a key differential where middle market CLOs you’re required to be 95% first lien highly diversified. You have obviously collateral quality tests or other items that the managers have to manage too. So there is a lot more asset flexibility that’s allowable in rated feeders, and I think that’s at the outset, but also as the portfolio evolves and as there’s market dislocation, managers have slightly more ability to take advantage of that asset flexibility over time.

Shiloh:

So then moving back to we were comparing and contrasting
the middle market AA and the rated feeder AA, which should offer a higher
return, in your opinion?

Allan:

The rated feeder AA should offer more return to the investors for a couple of reasons. One, there is more structural complexity associated with it, and that’s in the form of obviously the delay draw that we’ve talked about. The investors have to bear the delay draw component of those structures, and with that, the notes have to be issued in physical form. So there’s some operational burden on investors there.

Disclosure:

Note physical form means the notes are not owned electronically. Rather a notarized paper is evidence of ownership.

Allan:

There’s obviously the asset flexibility point that we talked about as well, which is a little differentiated, but then there’s the liquidity point. I think middle market CLOs have established themselves as a fairly liquid asset class at this point. They made up about 25% of the overall CLO market last year. So the acceptance of that structure across the board for investors has been broad. We’ve seen the spread basis between middle market and broadly syndicated tighten over the past 12 to 24 months. So I’d say a lot of the juice or a lot of the incremental spread for investors has come out of that. So rated feeders are a way for investors to gain some incremental spread with some of those trade-offs around liquidity, complexity, et cetera. But we obviously touched on some of the pros, the parts of ordination that we talked about being obviously a key benefit. There’s also typically a longer on-call period associated with the rated feeders, and so there are some obviously structural positives away from just the spread component that investors obviously consider and take into account.

Shiloh:

So then if we are talking about CLO equity versus rated feeder equity, would a lot of your points from the AA be relevant there where it’s a newer structure, people need to do work on it and understand it and are asking for a premium or asking to get paid a little more for doing the work, but at the same time, you’re less levered through the rated feeder?

Allan:

Yes, you are less levered through the rated feeder.

Shiloh:

So from the perspective of equity, maybe the returns model out the same because the equity investor needs to do some work, understand a new structure, but on the other hand, there’s less leverage in the rated feeder
and then maybe another con or pro, depending on how you look at it, would just be that the asset quality of the underlying loans might be different from the 95% first lien that you mentioned.

Allan:

That’s right. I think one of the key differences we touched on is obviously there’s more asset flexibility, and I think over the life of these vehicles while CLO, you’re constrained in 95% first lien, the asset flexibility given into the rated feeders over the course of a four year reinvestment period. I think there’s a lot of optionality that exists for rated feeder equity there. So I think managers have the ability to take advantage of market dislocations, of market changes, opportunities like we talked about in second liens or recurring revenue, that might come up over the course of that period that managers would not necessarily have in a more structured middle market CLO. So certainly I think the less leverage is critical, but I think one of the bigger, more interesting dynamics that we haven’t necessarily seen totally play out yet is that asset flexibility and how managers are able to leverage that to the equity’s benefit over the life of the deal.

Shiloh:

Maybe I missed it or not fully understanding, but when you say asset flexibility, you’re talking about the ability to have more second liens or other funky stuff,

Allan:

The ability to have more non-first lien assets. I won’t use funky assets, but more differentiated assets because I think one big aspect of the market is you think about second liens, there are periods of time where second liens are not that attractive or not that in vogue for managers, but there’s other times where there’s a lot of opportunity in that part of the market to pick up incremental spread for pretty attractive assets. And the same goes for recurring revenue. There’s going to be periods of time where there’s a lot of opportunity to do that in periods of time that there’s not. So the asset flexibility or the ability for the manager to really pick their spots across different parts of the market is more available on the rated feeder side.

Shiloh:

And then one last question is just should the market
expect to see a lot of new rated feeders? Is this a structure that’s going to
gain in popularity over time?

Allan:

We certainly think so. We’ve put obviously a lot of resources into the market. You’ve seen there be a slow start to the issuance of rated feeders, but I think certainly as the market develops, as the investor base continues to grow, as the process for execution of rated feeders becomes more streamlined, I think there’s definitely the anticipation that there will be incremental issuance of the product. It’s not that dissimilar to middle market CLOs 20 years ago when there was only a handful issued annually, and that’s obviously grown. I think this is a market that has the ability to really grow, maybe not to that scale, but certainly to become a large part of the overall private credit financing market over the next few years.

Shiloh:

Great. Well, Allan, thanks for coming on the podcast.
Really appreciate it.

Allan:

Thanks, Shiloh. Thanks for having me.

Disclosure:

The content here is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security. This podcast is not directed at any investment or potential investors in any Flat Rock Global Fund.

Definition Section

AUM refers to assets under management

LMT or liability management transactions are an out of court modification of a company’s debt

Layering refers to placing additional debt with a priority above the first lien term loan.

The secured overnight financing rate, SOFR, is a broad measure of the cost of borrowing cash overnight, collateralized by treasury securities.

The global financial crisis, GFC, was a period of extreme stress in global financial markets and banking systems between mid 2007 and
early 2009.

Credit ratings are opinions about credit risk for long-term issues or instruments. The ratings lie on a spectrum ranging from the highest credit quality on one end to default or junk on the other. A AAA is the highest credit quality. A C or D, depending on the agency issuing the rating is the lowest or junk quality.

Leveraged loans are corporate loans to companies that are not rated investment grade

Broadly syndicated loans are underwritten by banks, rated by nationally recognized statistical ratings organizations and often traded by
market participants.

Middle market loans are usually underwritten by several lenders with the intention of holding the investment through its maturity

Spread is the percentage difference in current yields of various classes of fixed income securities versus treasury bonds or another benchmark bond measure.

A reset is a refinancing and extension of A CLO investment.

EBITDA is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation,
and amortization. An add back would attempt to adjust EBITDA for non-recurring items.

General Disclaimer Section

References to interest rate moves are based on Bloomberg
data. Any mentions of specific companies are for reference purposes only and
are not meant to describe the investment merit of or potential or actual
portfolio changes related to securities of those companies unless otherwise
noted.

All discussions are based on US markets and US monetary and fiscal policies. Market forecasts and projections are based on current market conditions and are subject to change without notice. Projections should not be considered a guarantee. The views and opinions expressed by the Flat Rock global speaker are those of the speaker as of the date of the broadcast and do not necessarily represent the views of the firm as a whole.

Any such views are subject to change at any time based upon market or other conditions, and Flat Rock Global disclaims any responsibility to update such views. This material is not intended to be relied upon as a forecast, research, or investment advice. It is not a recommendation offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or to adopt any investment strategy. Neither Flat Rock
Global nor the Flat Rock Global speaker can be responsible for any direct or
incidental loss incurred by applying any of the information offered. None of
the information provided should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or
refrain from any investment-related course of action as neither Flat Rock
Global nor its affiliates are undertaking to provide impartial investment
advice, act as an impartial advisor, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity.
Additional information about this podcast along with an edited transcript may
be obtained by visiting flatrockglobal.com.

Shiloh:

Hi, I’m Shiloh Bates and welcome to the CLO Investor Podcast. CLO stands for Collateralized Loan Obligations, which are securities backed by pools of leveraged loans. In this podcast, we discuss current news in the CLO industry, and I interview key market players. Today I’m speaking with Drew Sweeney, the broadly syndicated CLO portfolio manager at TCW. In a previous life, Drew and I went to rival high schools in Arlington, Virginia, and we worked together as credit analysts at Four Corners Capital. Now Flat Rock invests in some of the CLOs that he manages. I asked Drew to come on the podcast to discuss his perspective on the quality of loan documentation in the broadly syndicated loan market, and to discuss examples of when loan investors were not as senior and secured as they might’ve liked to be. It’s a bit of a technical podcast, but that’s the only way to adequately treat the subject. If you are enjoying the podcast, please remember to share, like, and follow. And now my conversation with Drew Sweeney.

Drew, thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

Drew:

Thanks for having me. It’s good to be here.

Shiloh:

So I’d like to start off the podcast by just asking your background story and how you became a CLO manager.

Drew:

Well, as you know, many, many years ago we worked together in investment banking and I was syndicating bank loans at the time, and I liked the idea of being an investor as opposed to a banker. So I moved from First Union, which was a bank many years ago to the buy side and began working there. And we worked together again at a place called Four Corners, which I focused on managing bank loans in market value CLOs, and some closed-end funds, and a variety other products. And then just my path led me eventually to TCW, but I think it’s the natural progression of do you like to be an investor?

And then the most common vehicle with investing in loans are CLOs. And so it’s just a natural pairing.

Shiloh:

And what do you find interesting about bank loans in particular?

Drew:

I like bank loans because they’re not always efficient. So you can outwork competitors, you can meet with management teams on a regular basis. You can apply a level of discipline to and process. And over years, I’ve been doing this over 25 years. When you apply a level of discipline and a process, you can just see what works and doesn’t then you iterate on that. But I like investing in general and then you combine that with the inefficiencies of the bank loan market and I think it makes for great opportunity.

Shiloh:

So I think the attraction for me in coming over from the investment banking side was that in investment banking you work on a lot of deals that never really come to fruition, and that can be quite frustrating.

Whereas on the buy side, if you’re investing in bank loans, there’s in an active market, you’re a credit analyst, you cover an industry or two, and a lot of times there’s just a lot of activity. So you work on a loan opportunity, you might want to do it or not, but even if you don’t, it’s good to understand more of the companies in your space. So I just felt the amount of work that you do versus the product and how interesting it is really skewed very favorably to working on the buy side.

Drew:

Yeah, makes sense. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in banking, but you’re right, the number of deals that do not go through that you spend your weekend modeling is remarkable.

Shiloh:

Now you’re at TCW. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about the loan platform in particular?

Drew:

We have roughly six and a half billion dollars of loan AUM today. We manage 12 CLOs as part of that. And I think the idea of TCW Bank loans is really, we are a bank loan team that is sitting in a very large asset manager and we try to leverage all the things about being a large asset manager and get the benefits of being something more nimble. On the bank loan side, I think we offer a pretty differentiated product. There are three or four things that distinguish us from others. We have an integrated bank loan team, which means basically our analysts are looking at bank loans, high yield and investment grade. And simply put, we always say competition doesn’t stop at capital structure. So if you’re in technology or if you’re in telecom or if you’re in cable or a variety of industries and you’re only looking at non-investment grade borrowers, you don’t really know where CapEx dollars are coming from, or trends, and you really don’t know all your competitors.

And then outside of that, I think we’ve built, probably from investing in the product, one of the most robust databases that exist. We have information on roughly 850 loan borrowers in the loan universe. And if you think about the CS index, that was 1600 borrowers.

Shiloh:

So that’s the Credit Suisse loan index.

Drew:

Yes. And then if you say of those 1600, maybe 1200 are liquid, and we have three quarters of those mapped. So not only do we see how our borrowers perform each quarter, then we see how the borrowers’ competitors perform each quarter. And it allows us to use these as building blocks in exchange. If our chemical companies are doing not what we think and these chemical companies are, we can swap.

Shiloh:

If it’s a private market though, how are you tracking loans that you aren’t participating in in the primary?

Drew:

This is what it gets back to the disciplined and outworking competitors.

We have a whole team of research associates that work along with the senior analysts and they spend a lot of time getting access, keeping access, and adding that information on a quarterly basis basis.

Shiloh:

Interesting. So the theme for today’s podcast is weak loan documentation. So the idea of being a first lien lender is that in a bankruptcy, if the business doesn’t perform as expected, if you end up in a bankruptcy, I think it happens to about 3% of borrowers each year. But in the restructuring process as a first lien lender, you’re secured by all the collateral and you’re first in line for any proceeds. So that’s conceptually how a restructuring should work. But I guess what actually happens in reality doesn’t always conform to the description I just gave. Once you make a first lien loan, some things should be prohibited. So one is the payment of dividends to the company’s owners.

The first lien lenders are not signing up for that. Again, they want to be first in line. They’d rather see that cash go to repay the loan. In most cases, you’re secured by the collateral of the company. So you want to make sure that none of that collateral can leak away from you over time or through malfeasance by the owner. So then one exception though is if you do end up in a bankruptcy, oftentimes there’s a debtor in possession loan. So that comes in when the company is out of cash and somebody’s got to put up some additional dollars so that the company can pay its workforce, for example. And then in that case, the debtor end possession financing does come in senior to the first lien term loan. When you’re committing to a new loan in the primary market, it’s the sketch, if you will, of how the loan documentation is going to read.

That comes from the term sheet. We’ll see a term sheet first. And then what’s some of the important things that you would look for in the term sheet?

Drew:

You’re looking at all the basics of what you would expect or the price talk would be, what the maturity is, what your assets, so what the collateral is, and then whether or not what’s permitted in terms of repayment of debt for IPO proceeds, what’s permitted for dividends, whether or not any bonds or loans mature inside your borrower. So you’re going through a checklist of things to make sure that in essence, exactly what you described, a first lien senior secured loan is in actuality a first lien senior secured loan. Who the borrower is too, whether it’s at the Op-co or the Hold-Co, is something else you’ll see in the term sheet.

Shiloh:

So a company may have a number of different subsidiaries in your terminology.

The Op-co actually does have some business operations that it’s doing. And then the holding company in the organizational chart, that’s just basically the owner of the different op-cos. So then the idea of the first lien loan is that all the subsidiaries, all the different parts of a company, are borrowers under the credit agreement. There’s different assets of the different subsidiaries. The idea anyway is that all of that is pledged as collateral for the first lien loan.

Drew:

That’s the idea. And in reality, back from my days in investment banking, one of the first things I was taught is you want to be as close to the assets as you can, so as close to the collateral as you can. So in a perfect world, there’s one op-co and you’re lending against that. That’s not in reality what a company with 300 million to $2 billion of EBITDA has.

The org chart’s much more complicated than that. You want to have as many of those subsidiaries as your guarantors of the loan, and then you want to make sure that the subsidiaries stay your guarantor.

Shiloh:

So what are some reasons that a subsidiary would not be a party to the credit agreement?

Drew:

Some of those borrowers aren’t part of our guarantor package just because sponsors or the companies feel they don’t need to do that to get the loan done. So there’s some optionality in it. There’s some tax consequence to it when it comes to foreign subs. And then there’s some just natural evolution where there are times when the loan market is easily accessible and there are times when the loan market is not. So a company might do an acquisition in 2018 and follow that up with another acquisition in 2021, but they don’t want to pay down the debt of the 2018 facility.

So they might finance that separately, and it might be part of our box, but not our explicit guarantor. So there’s a variety of reasons it ends up there.

Shiloh:

But the general idea is that the material subsidiaries are guarantors of the term loan. So something foreign subsidiaries, like you mentioned, may not be guarantors. Maybe they’ve pledged their equity but are not specific guarantor. Maybe a subsidiary with an immaterial amount of revenue or EBITDA could also not be pledged. Maybe they just didn’t want to go through the hassle or the paperwork to do that. So some of these subsidiaries just end up outside of the borrower group and are not considered guarantors of the first lien loan.

Drew:

That’s right. And the last item you mentioned is something that happens quite a bit, I think in certain segments more than others, but some businesses will have an immaterial amount of EBITDA and it won’t be required that they’re pledged as a guarantor, that those assets are part of our collateral.

And in technology, those may be the fastest growing assets. So they may not be at the time you do the loan, but three years from now it could be driving the business. So there’s always that risk.

Shiloh:

Then what’s the difference between a subsidiary that’s a guarantor of the loan versus an unrestricted subsidiary?

Drew:

So we have a guarantor that is a guarantor in our collateral agreement, and we have a non guarantor that has to live by the credit agreement, but it lives by the credit agreement however, and it’s part of our restricted group. And then we have an unrestricted sub that’s actually outside of our borrower group entirely and not bound by the same obligations as the collateral agreement.

Shiloh:

Got it. So then it sounds like the primary market, you’re looking at a term sheet which is going to sketch out these terms, the terms that make it into the credit agreement, which is the legally binding doc once the loan closes.

So it sounds like the credit agreement is designed to give you the first lien that you want, but also some flexibility to the borrower. And so not every single asset makes it into the restricted group or the guarantors. There is some flexibility there and it probably should be warranted. You don’t really need to take every asset. So another concept I wanted to just chat through before we maybe get into some historical cases is just the concept of baskets. What’s a basket in a credit agreement?

Drew:

A basket is going to be a carve out of some amount. So most of our covenants today are in currents-based covenants. So you’re going to have a basket for permitted liens, a basket for dividends, and that’s saying you’re allowed to dividend out a certain amount per year. You’re allowed to invest in this non guarantor restricted subsidiary a certain amount per year.

And in the example that we talked about earlier where there’s a tech business that might be fast growing but not part of a collateral, the management and the owner and the sponsor will want to be able to invest in that technology. It may be part of the future of their business. So they create these carve outs and they create these baskets. And essentially those baskets, many of them have the right to build over time based on the growth of the overall company based on a leverage ratio or a variety of other things. So those baskets are also a natural part of credit agreements.

Shiloh:

So the basket is a function of EBITDA. So if you have a hundred million of EBITDA, a for example, then the credit agreement might give you some percent of that to invest in unrestricted sub, for example, or to pay a dividend.

That’s how to think about it.

Drew:

Yes.

Shiloh:

And then as EBITDA grows over time, is it warranted that the owners of the company should have more flexibility?

Drew:

I think to some degree it is. Flexibility is warranted when the company is growing, and the issue is it’s just whenever things are manipulated. So we’ve had borrowers go grow EBITDA nicely. It could be a cyclical business, it could be a business that has competition on the horizon that maybe the broader market doesn’t appreciate. Then they’ve maybe grown through debt financed acquisition, but they’ve realized synergies and they’ve maintained add-backs at the same time. So EBITDA appears to be growing rapidly, while it’s growing, but it’s growing mostly through acquisition. And then because they’ve built this basket, they take large dividend out because the market will be hot periodically, and you go back to the market, you dividend it out, people are in need of paper, and then within six to 12 months, all of a sudden EBITDA is not growing the way you thought it was because it’s either a cyclical business, like I said, or other competition has come online and you’re realizing those adjustments are not going to be realized.

And then at that point, you’ve just added a layer of debt.

Shiloh:

So I think there’s three cases in the loan market, and I’d like to talk through all three of ’em where lenders made a first lien loan and it turned out that there were some loopholes in the credit agreements where they weren’t as senior and secured as they would’ve liked to be. So one is J Crew. Why don’t we start there? What happened at J Crew?

Drew:

I think J Crew was particularly interesting for a lot of investors because it was litigated and the litigation allowed us to see what baskets a sponsor was using or company was using in order to drop collateral out. So this is really about leakage from your borrower group. So where you lose collateral, you think you have intellectual property, it doesn’t have EBITDA associated with it. So they valued it, and they valued it at $250 million.

And they happened to have some basket flexibility between their investment covenant and their general basket that allowed them to dividend out 250 million dollar worth of collateral. And in this case, they dividend out from the guarantor to a non guarantor. So once it was in that non guarantor box, they had something that allowed them to pass through from a non guarantor box out to an unrestricted sub. So essentially they dropped collateral in the value of $250 million, which you can easily argue was an underestimated number. They dropped it out of the borrower box, and they did this to facilitate an exchange of notes at the whole-co.

Shiloh:

Okay, so the intellectual property was collateral for the first lien lenders, and then they are able to move that collateral out through baskets, the baskets you mentioned, and then they start sitting in a subsidiary where they’re no longer guarantors of the first lien loan.

And then didn’t they also raise new debt against that intellectual property?

Drew:

They did.

Shiloh:

So even if they would’ve dividend the IP to the unrestricted sub, it could have stayed in the sub and that would’ve been a subsidiary owned by the borrower under the credit agreement. So that would really not have at the end of the day hurt your position, but it was the fact that at the unrestricted subsidiary, they actually raised more debt that effectively was jumping the line, if you will, in terms of the priority of payments that was really expected when the term loan was put in place.

Drew:

You’ve had collateral that you thought was yours that doesn’t have EBITDA associated with it, leak out of the borrower. So by default, you’ve essentially been primed. You’re not at the Opco where this collateral is now held. You’re at a Opco, but you’re at an Opco that doesn’t have IP.

Shiloh:

Is the market response to this that the market saw the weakness in loan documentation and for future loans, this is something that’s tied up and shouldn’t be a worry? Or is that too optimistic way to think about it?

Drew:

Yeah, it is addressed in many credit agreements. It’s usually tied to very specific collateral. However, in the market, it’s referred to as the J Crew trap door. So essentially on every one of our credit writeups, we have whether or not the J Crew Trap door exists or it doesn’t exist, but it does exist in credit agreements today. And in fact, in many, many deals when we receive the first term sheet, it exists there and then it’s very common for it to be pushed back on. But the reality is, is people are still trying to get it in. The reality is there are weaknesses in all these documents that you can say there’s no trap door in this deal, but it doesn’t mean you have all the collateral, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t baskets that they won’t be able to provision out.

Shiloh:

So that’s J Crew. Another big case in the market was Serta. Serta is a mattress company, And what happened there?

Drew:

Serta is a story about priming. So there’s a sacred right in terms of your priority of a lien, priority of payment, or that’s thought to be a sacred, right. And you had mentioned at the outset about dips. So when a company needs to file for bankruptcy and they raise a dip, that dip goes in front of the existing first lien. It provides liquidity and it’s agreed to essentially by all parties in the bankruptcy. But a bankruptcy, when you file for chapter 11, it’s a complete restructuring. You lower the quantum of debt and you also provide for the company’s liquidity via the dip, and you can restrike all your liens and get rid of things that you don’t want, close EBITDA negative stores. There’s a lot of things that can be done. With Serta,

essentially what happened is they voted, and with a simple majority, roughly about 55% majority in a 45% minority group, they were able to contribute $200 million of new capital to help Serta with their liquidity issuance just like a dip. And then as opposed to the benefit being pro rata to all lenders, getting the benefit of participating in the DIP, and then participating in what the other debts exchanged for, the majority component was able to exchange into a second out. And then there was also a third out provided for future exchanges.

Shiloh:

So a second out and a third out, it’s a secure term loan, but the second out only gets paid after the first out is paid.

Drew:

So the new money becomes the first out. The majority holders that are in the first lien, and some of the majority holders that are in the second lien, they move into the second out.

And then the minority holders within the first lien actually exchange into what would be a fourth out behind because they preserved a small amount of third out for future exchanges. But the reality is that they became third or fourth out, so they dropped from being a first lien senior secured lender with the right of payment from first to then essentially fourth.

Shiloh:

So Serta is a story about some lenders voting to give themselves the ability to prime or step ahead of other first lien lenders. Is, again the same question as related to J Crew, is that loophole that was found in the docks and now the loophole is largely closed, or is this a continuing risk in loan documentation?

Drew:

This exists in most deals today. A term sheet can say it’s cured or not cured, but in reality, when I talked about the evolution of credit agreement before and you had expanding allowances and then you had removing restrictions by increasing baskets and doing those things, the third evolution is essentially when you can make changes to the priority of payment by a simple majority.

So changing the voting rights within credit agreements and those voting rights are pretty pervasive within credit agreements today, meaning simple majority voting rights.

Shiloh:

So then I think the third case that was very prominent in the market was Chewy. So can you tell us what did it do and why has it become a case study in the loan market?

Drew:

Well, PetSmart acquired Chewy, which was an online pet retailer, and they acquired it for roughly $3 billion. And the thing that makes it notable is that Chewy was a wholly owned subsidiary at the time of the acquisition and as a wholly owned subsidiary, it was a guarantor of our credit agreement. It was in our restricted box and a guarantor. And in fact, they raised term loan money around this acquisition. So the catch is, it’s only a guarantor if it’s wholly owned. So if you sell 1% of a business in this credit agreement and it’s no longer wholly owned, then it’s not a guarantor.

So that’s what made it unique. So essentially what PetSmart and Chewy did, or what PetSmart did is they used investment capacity to transfer out 16.5% of the Chewy equity, and then they used a dividend to dividend out another 20% to a whole-co of the Chewy equity. So essentially 37% of this 3 billion asset got out of our borrower, and then it was no longer a guarantor of our credit agreement.

Shiloh:

So because Chewy was not a wholly owned subsidiary, they were able to send dividends up to the parent and get the capital to the business’ owners. How did Chewy end up not being a wholly owned subsidiary of PetSmart?

Drew:

It’s not uncommon for a company or a business to co-own something, have joint ventures and not own a hundred percent of a subsidiary. So the idea that a wholly owned sub, and you can only guarantee the collateral of what you own wholly, so that makes sense.

So it’s relatively a benign characteristic within the credit agreement to say it has to be a wholly owned sub to guarantee this debt. So the difference is the sponsor and the company use that relatively benign clause to be able to use baskets that were permissive where they could dividend out large portions of the borrower and essentially have value escape and also make it a non guarantor of our credit agreement, which the loan traded into the seventies at the time because it was thought to be pretty horrific. I think the thing that worked out well about it is they essentially ended up IPOing Cewy for a much greater dollar amount than the value of the entire term loan, despite the fact that lenders were in a bad position as a result of the weak credit docs, it turned out that Chewy was worth far in excess of the amount that they had paid for it, and they valued it at, and as a result, the term loan lenders got out whole.

Shiloh:

So in that case, the credit agreement had this loophole in it, but the business ended up performing well and the first lien got repaid. So that’s the punchline there. But it sounds like it gave the lenders a good scare. In all these case studies, is it that the weakness in the loan doc was put in intentionally, the private equity firm that owns the company was thinking that this is something that they might have wanted to do to lenders in the future? Or is it that the docs were just drafted this way and later only after the business had some operational difficulties did somebody at the company or the private equity sponsor figure out that there was some optionality for them and that the first lien lenders were not as secured as they might’ve thought they were?

Drew:

I think, this is my opinion, but what started as — we’ll talk to certain sponsors and they won’t even know the loopholes in these credit agreements.

So I think what started as attorneys feeling like they wanted to build as much flexibility into these documents, and they were essentially showing their ability to work around the credit agreement and create loopholes, and then some sponsors took advantage of some of those loopholes. But generally speaking, a lot of documents have weakness in them, a lot of documents, and we track every sponsor. One of the things we do within our database is we track every sponsor. We know what the average price of every sponsor’s deal is, if they have 64 deals in the market or if they have 12 deals in the market.

Shiloh:

And a sponsor, by the way, that’s the private equity firm that bought the company.

Drew:

That’s right. So while many of these documents, we have one favored private equity sponsor that we have the most exposure to any private equity sponsor, and they’ve never had a US borrower lose a dollar of debt, they don’t use these loopholes.

And guess what? These loopholes exist in their credit agreements too. So I think it’s two things. One is you have some sponsors who have been aggressive with it. All these sponsors have a capital markets person who’s focused on the docs.

Shiloh:

This is the broadly syndicated loan market.

Drew:

Yeah, the broadly syndicated loan market is this broad array of investors that could be in a variety of different investment vehicles and they’re investing in many, many deals. So for every new loan that gets syndicated, you may have 130 borrowers in it, but you only have one private equity sponsor. So that control pivot and having a single point person allows them to focus and push on docs in a different way than having a confederation of investors together. So I think yes, there’s an effort by private equity to make sure these loopholes exist. A lot of times they exist with private equity firms that don’t focus on them, and I think once they existed or once some of this stuff was developed, then essentially lawyers that developed these docs have looked to make them standardized and weaker across the board.

Shiloh:

So is it then to find yourself in a situation where you’re being harmed by loose loan documentation, business really needs to underperform? First off, the business is performing well and the loan doc is weak, you’re probably fine. You also need a private equity firm or sponsor that’s going to want to do something that’s not creditor friendly and risk the wrath of the loan market. From the perspective of a private equity firm, if they do this, if they screw over one group of lenders, I would assume people have somewhat long memories in the loan market.

Drew:

I think it does influence company’s ability to borrow, and we’ve seen that before. I don’t know how long the memory is, but I think you’re right. I think generally three things are present.

Shiloh:

You need a loose stock,

Drew:

financial stress,

Shiloh:

financial stress, and a private equity firm owner who decides that they’re going to put it to the lenders and bear the reputational risk for them that might come along with that.

And it may affect the borrowing costs of companies in the future who are owned by that private equity firm.

Drew:

I don’t know the memory that the collective investment world in loans has, but what we’ve been screaming from our little mountaintop is that we track, as I just said, every single financial sponsor. We know how many deals they have in the market, we know how many liability management exercises they performed, which we can get to, but we also know what the average price of their loans are. So when a sponsor is a bad actor on a repeated basis, we’re no longer lending to them. If they’re a bad investor and all their loans traded 80, we’re not lending to them. So that essentially means I think some of the sponsors you see in the market today are going to be cut out of the BSL market.

Shiloh:

Interesting. So it sounds like when you’re evaluating a loan opportunity, it’s not just the fundamentals of the business that you care about, but it’s actually the ownership team, the private equity firm, and how they’ve treated lenders in the past. That’s an important variable in your credit selection process.

Drew:

And we meet with sponsors on a regular basis. We go into offices, we have conversations and we have relationships. And I would say it’s really clear when you talk to some of the sponsors, some of the sponsors are very operations focused. They have teams of people that help drive synergies between businesses. Some of the sponsors are very legal based and they’re looking to have a way out in the event that things don’t work well. So we try to focus on that component.

Shiloh:

Okay. What’s an LME and why is that important today?

Drew:

An LME is a liability management exercise, much like what we discussed with Serta, and it is essentially an out of court bankruptcy.

It’s not as clean as a chapter 11. You don’t restate your leases, you don’t close doors. You usually don’t get rid of the quantum of debt you have outstanding, but it does restrike a lot of the borrower’s debt, and it does usually come with a component of liquidity where the lenders are inserting some liquidity into the borrower.

Shiloh:

So we’ve seen an uptick in LME activity over the last two years. What do you think is driving these out of court restructurings?

Drew:

For context, we’ve had roughly 60 LMEs since 2014 through the first quarter of 2024, and then we had 25 LMEs in 2023 and eight in the first quarter of this year. So clearly the ramp has been significant in the last two years relative to what we’ve seen historically. And I think at the end of the day we’ve seen the things that are driving that are high rates is the first and most prevalent thing.

A component of high rates is every credit agreement prior to 2008 used to require hedging. It no longer does in post 2008, credit agreements really didn’t include mandatory hedging.

Shiloh:

So the hedging would be you’re taking on this debt on a floating rate basis, so the business was required to hedge that floating rate risk or exposure in the derivatives market,

Drew:

and you hedge it out from floating to fixed for half the term loan and then fast forward to today, and that wasn’t required. So two things happen as rates spike so quickly that companies were not able to get hedges on, and then when they did get them on, they were considerably higher than if they’re putting them on at three or four percent SOFR/LIBOR, whatever measurement versus essentially a zero rate interest rate environment. Well, you’ve already missed the benefit of the real hedge. So high rates, lack of hedging, and then I think sponsors, because it’s been such a competitive market where they’ve raised so much money, there’s just been a lot of high purchase price multiples made over the last five years.

So all those things together mean you’ve got a higher quantum of debt and you have higher interest rates, and it’s very hard for some of these companies to bridge some of the last couple of years.

Shiloh:

The LME that’s tied to the specific case that we talked about was Serta. LMEs are tied to Serta where one lender group is trying to prime another, and this is the description of lender on lender violence. That’s where that comes in.

Drew:

We’ve seen LMEs performed on a prorata basis, meaning lenders aren’t harmed if they’re not in the existing group. And we’ve seen LMEs come in a non-pro rata manner, just like Serta, where the majority holders are favored and the minority holders do worse.

Shiloh:

So the LMEs have resulted in some pretty low loan recoveries. Is that a function of rapid business, fundamental deterioration, or the lender on lender violence?

Drew:

It’s a bit of all of that. So we’re in 2024, and it sounds crazy to say, but 2020, 21, 22, 23, and part of 24 for many industries, were dictated by still emerging from COVID. It sounds silly, but we lived through a period of zero revenue for some of these businesses. They had to take on more debt to bridge that gap. And then we had inventory management issues. We had logistical issues where you weren’t able to get supplies in and then you had inflation and then you had to pass along those costs. And then we’ve had destocking. So whether it’s packaging or whether it’s chemicals, some of these companies had quite a volatile performance over the last two, three years, or a travel business. They might’ve been dealing with the legacy of COVID and how much debt they took on during that period of time. Some of the businesses are just failing, and they’re zombies, and this has forced its hand.

So there’s a variety of reasons why a company might’ve gotten here.

Shiloh:

So how do you protect yourself from lower loan recoveries?

Drew:

This is part of this sponsor outreach and having those relationships. We have somebody who’s full-time in charge of reaching out to advisors and attorneys and came from an advisor background. So when you see a company with weakness, you need to get your hands around.,”Is there a group forming?” “Is there a cooperative?” The very first step is cooperative groups started to form to prevent this lender on lender violence that took place in the market. So I don’t know if it was a year or a year and a half ago, we started seeing cooperative agreements among lenders, formed on a lot of stressed borrowers, and the idea was in the event something happens, we are prepared to act as a united front, and that was the first step.

So we try to make sure that where there’s stress in a borrower, that we’re going to get involved in being part of that group and being part of driving the solution.

Shiloh:

How do you think a CLO equity investor should think about the lower loan recoveries and potential risks in the loan documentation in the broadly syndicated loan market?

Drew:

I think you have to look at the adjusted default rate. So if you look at default rates today, its loan defaults are below 2% the adjusted default rate, if you take in LMEs, it’s around four and a half percent, somewhere around that. So there’s about a two and a half percent difference between the actual default rate in LMEs. And some of the LMEs, it’s deceiving, because you’ll get 85% of your debt restated, you’ll get 90 cents on the dollar restated. The problem is in a bankruptcy, you are getting rid of a lot of debt, you are getting rid of leases, you’re getting rid of EBITDA negative stores, and in LME, it only is a cure if the business improves on the back end of it because you’re really not getting rid of the quantum of debt.

You’re only providing for liquidity. So obviously we’re in the weeds on all these names. So there are some borrowers where you see an LME exercise done, and it might be in healthcare services, and we have one borrower that’s in healthcare services. Well, if you think about the consequence of COVID for anybody who’s in healthcare services is they had a tremendous amount of inflation within labor. So first you had wages go up, then you had a lot of nurses leave the entire system. So then that spike wages higher. So if you only have a reimbursement rate that’s set by a government entity and your primary costs are wages and you’ve been having inflation in wages for three years, it takes a long time to get through that. It takes years to get through that curve. So we had one deal where an LME was completed and it was done on a pro-rata basis.

So everyone ended up at the same spot and the lenders injected additional liquidity, essentially primed ourselves, but then all got ratable treatment. And in my opinion, as that loan trades close to 90 today, is the best decision we could have made because fundamental performance is improving for the last several quarters. It’s improving because wage inflation’s decelerating, and they’re finally able to pass on the costs of all that labor. So every situation’s different.

So I’m curious because you have more than one manager in general, what you’re hearing and what your thoughts are on potentially lower recoveries.

Shiloh:

I definitely think that for the broadly syndicated loan market, lower loan recoveries has been the risk. So a lot of times an investor will throw a stat at me, okay, here’s some low loan recoveries in the index. But really the question for me is, well, are those loans in CLOs and then even more important, are they in my CLOs?

So my view is that if you’re working with the right managers in broadly syndicated that a lot of these lower loan recoveries and loose stocks can be avoided. I also think that this year, we didn’t really talk about it during this podcast, but refinancings and resets or CLO extensions have the ability to materially increase CLO equity returns. So on the one hand, we do have these low loan recoveries. On the other hand, the upside from refis and resets is significant, and then you’re a broadly syndicated CLO manager, but the majority of our equity positions are in middle market CLOs. I’ll give you an example. A few years ago we had a new VP who was trying to understand better middle market loan credit agreement, and we had a lawyer on the phone and we were going through the specifics of the doc, and this VP that we had was asking all these questions around J Crew around Serta trap doors, add backs, and the lawyers like, “no, no. In the middle market, there’s none of that. There’s no unrestricted subs, there’s no non guarantors or no baskets, there’s no dividends”

Disclosure AI:

Note, this is one example of a middle market credit agreement. Other credit agreements may vary.

Shiloh:

So I think for somebody investing in middle market loans or middle market CLOs, I think that recoveries there are going to track more to the historical norm of the last 30 years. So I don’t see it as big of a risk in the middle market CLOs.

Drew:

Yeah, I think there’s one other big factor out there. I think most of this financial stress is coming from higher rates, which 60% of our borrowers are sponsor driven. So if a sponsor bought a company, they’ve owned it for five or six years and they want to sell it, they can’t get the multiple they want today. If we fast forward, I’m not talking about rates going to zero, but if SOFR comes down to 3% and now all of a sudden you start seeing these assets trade again and LDOs increase again, I think it goes a long way to ease a lot of the stress and the interest stress that our borrowers are feeling today.

So I think we’re in the eye of the storm in the BSL market today. Rates will go lower at some point, and that will ease a lot. The other thing in the BSL market, we don’t have a lot of nearing maturities. There’s very little still to mature in 25, and there’s very little to mature in 26. So if you have several years to wait this out, it doesn’t really matter the vol that you had along the way, as long as you can get to the point of being able to refinance your debt.

Shiloh:

These loans have initially a loan a value of 45 or 50% or something like that. So there’s a lot of cushion in there. A lot of things can go wrong in the business, and as a first lien lender, as long as the wheels don’t fully come off the cart, we should be money good at the end of the day.

Drew:

Agreed.

Shiloh:

Well, Drew, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Really enjoyed our conversation.

Drew:

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Disclosure AI:

The content here is for informational purposes only and should not be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security. This podcast is not directed at any investment or potential investors in any Flat Rock Global Fund. Definition Section

AUM refers to assets under management

LMT or liability management transactions are an out of court modification of a company’s debt.

Layering refers to placing additional debt with a priority above the first lien term loan.

The secured overnight financing rate, SOFR, is a broad measure of the cost of borrowing cash overnight, collateralized by treasury securities.

The global financial crisis, GFC, was a period of extreme stress in global financial markets and banking systems between mid 2007 and early 2009.

Credit ratings are opinions about credit risk for long-term issues or instruments,, The ratings lie on a spectrum ranging from the highest credit quality on one end to default or junk on the other.

A AAA is the highest credit quality A C or D, depending on the agency issuing the rating, is the lowest or junk quality. Leveraged loans are corporate loans to companies that are not rated investment grade

Broadly syndicated loans are underwritten by banks, rated by nationally recognized statistical ratings organizations and often traded by market participants.

Middle market loans are usually underwritten by several lenders with the intention of holding the investment through its maturity

Spread is the percentage difference in current yields of various classes of fixed income securities versus treasury bonds or another benchmark bond measure.

ETFs are exchange traded funds.

A reset is a refinancing and extension of A CLO investment period

EBITDA is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

An add back would attempt to adjust EBITDA for non-recurring items.

The Credit Suisse Leveraged Loan Index measures the performance of the broadly syndicated loan market.

General Disclaimer Section

References to interest rate moves are based on Bloomberg data.

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TCW, its officers, directors, employees or clients may have positions in securities or investments mentioned in this publication, which positions may change at any time without notice. While the information and statistical data contained herein are based on sources believed to be reliable, we do not represent that it is accurate and should not be relied on as such or be the basis for an investment decision. The information contained may include preliminary information and/or forward-looking statements, Due to numerous factors, actual events may differ substantially from those presented. TCW assumes no duty to update any forward-looking statements or opinions in this document. Any opinions expressed herein are current only as of the time made and are subject to change without notice. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Copyright TCW 2024.