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Now Private Equity Wants In on the Bailout? Spare Me

Now Private Equity Wants In on the Bailout? Spare Me

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Private equity firms are crying foul, fearful that companies they own are largely cut off from the $377 billion of small business loans and grants baked into the U.S.'s $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill. But do they really deserve any part in a bailout?

Statistics from corporate loan borrowers that make $50 million a year or less in Ebitda don’t paint a pretty picture. An average middle-market business has a debt-to-Ebitda ratio of 4.8 times and is paying an interest rate of 7.7%, data from S&P Global Market Intelligence show. Put another way, this company is using about 37% of its operating earnings to pay interest alone  — and that was before the outbreak. So if this business were running at, say, one-third of its full capacity because of regional lockdowns, it wouldn’t even be able to cover its interest payments. A cheap loan from the Small Business Administration would certainly help. 

But before asking Uncle Sam for money, private equity firms should consider their role in this mess. Should they be liable if this virus morphs into a full-blown credit crisis?

In the past decade, the sector started urging portfolio companies to tap the loan market rather than issue high-yield bonds, which were largely closed off to businesses their size. Today, roughly half of leveraged loans, or about $1.5 trillion, are issued by sponsors for their holdings.

There’s certainly a good case for private equity firms to back leveraged loans. Unlike bonds, these loans can be called immediately — that is, borrowers can redeem them at any time — which allows portfolio companies to refinance more easily. What’s more, these businesses tend to be closely held; the loan market’s opaque reporting standards spare firms from quarterly financial disclosures to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

But private equity’s large presence in the market has caused a fast deterioration of loan quality. Roughly half of borrowers are rated B or worse, up from 30% in 2012, data compiled by Citigroup Inc. show. After all, levering up to juice returns is the sector’s forte. Last year, more than 75% of deals included debt multiples greater than six times Ebitda, compared with 25% after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., as I’ve noted.

Everyone suffers in times of distress, private equity firms and corporate issuers alike. In March, the average yield of the S&P/LSTA U.S. Leveraged Loan 100 Index shot as high as 13% from 5.6% just a month earlier, as the Big Three ratings agencies were busy downgrading high-yield issuers at the fastest pace in at least a decade. If the Federal Reserve hadn’t stepped in with new financing facilities, how would Middle America roll over its loans?

According to the parameters of the rescue bill, companies with more than 500 employees aren’t eligible for small-business relief. That number includes affiliates, meaning staff at portfolio companies are being added together. To get around this, the industry wants the Trump administration to view their investments as independent entities. 

In reality, these holdings don’t operate separately, at least not in terms of financing decisions. Private equity firms have teams of lawyers and advisers dedicated to crafting credit agreements that give them as much financial flexibility as possible, such as removing caps on leverage ratios. As a result, the leveraged loan market is now filled with covenant-lite loans, as my colleague Brian Chappatta has written. 

The wheel of fortune is turning. Banks that agreed to help private equity firms may be too busy with other obligations right now. With blue-chip companies drawing at least $124 billion from their credit lines in the first three weeks of March alone, and dollar funding tight, do lenders have the bandwidth? There are $66 billion leveraged loans mandated, or in the works, and about $10 billion under syndication — that is, marketed but not priced, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

There’s good reason to believe the current jitters go beyond a few canceled deals, and could threaten to trigger system-wide margin calls. Leveraged loans aren’t mark-to-market, but the financing facilities that banks provide to asset managers (which allow the latter to buy such loans before packaging and selling them as bonds) tell a lot about the quality of these assets. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. already demanded their clients to put up extra collateral, or face the risk of liquidation, Bloomberg News reported last month.

It’s unclear if industry titans can convince President Donald Trump to bail out their investments. For its part, the Federal Reserve is loath to make loans to distressed companies. Since the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010, the Fed isn’t allowed to take big credit risks and can only lend with a high degree of protection.

Private equity may be in the eye of the storm, but it certainly doesn’t need a bailout. Last year, capital committed to this sector grew 20% to a record $1.3 trillion, according to data provided by PitchBook, a Morningstar company. So instead of trying to pass off their portfolio companies as small businesses, firms can use that dry powder to shore up the balance sheets of their investments.

These firms came out of the collapse of Lehman Brothers fairly unscathed. Perhaps the coronavirus could finally teach them a lesson: Using cheap debt to pay themselves dividends isn’t such a savvy investment model after all. 

4.8 times 7.7% comes to 37%.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Shuli Ren is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian markets. She previously wrote on markets for Barron's, following a career as an investment banker, and is a CFA charterholder.

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