💥Sycamore Partners is a B.E.A.S.T. Part I.💥

🔥Rinse Wash & Repeat (Long Sycamore Partners)🔥

Sycamore Partners is a private equity firm that specializes in retail and consumer investments; it “partner[s] with management teams to improve the operating profitability and strategic value of their businesses.” Back in the summer of 2017, Sycamore Partners acquired Massachusetts-based office retailer Staples Inc. for $6.9b — a premium to the company’s then-trading price but a significant discount from its 2014 high. Your office supplies, powered by private equity! The acquisition occurred shortly after Staples ran afoul of federal regulators who prevented Staples from acquiring Florida-based Office Depot Inc. ($ODP)(which, itself, appears to just trudge along).

Sycamore’s reported thesis revolved around Staples’ delivery unit, a B2B supplier of businesses. Accordingly, per Reuters:

Sycamore will be organizing Staples along three lines: its stronger delivery business, its weaker retail business and its business in Canada, two sources familiar with the deal said. This structure will give Sycamore the option to shed Staples’ retail business in the future, one of the sources said.

The retailer had 1255 US and 304 Canadian stores at the time of the deal. The business reportedly had 48% of the office supply market, generating $889mm of adjusted free cash flow in 2016.

*****

Fast forward 18 months and, Sycamore is already looking to take equity out of the company. According to Bloomberg, the plan is for Staples to issue $5.2b of new debt ($3.2b in term loans and $2b of other secured and unsecured debt), which will be used to take out an existing $3.25b ‘24 term loan and $1b of 8.5% ‘25 unsecured notes (which Sycamore reportedly owns roughly $71mm or 7% of).* This is textbook Sycamore, so much so that it’s actually cliche AF — or as Dan Primack said, “…this sort of myopic greed gives ammunition to private equity’s critics.” Like this guy:

Sycamore Partners preps Staples for future bankruptcy with $1B dividend recap: https://t.co/SuDm8jAddu

— Jim Smith (@redphase) March 26, 2019

And this gal:

Staples will be one of the next retail chains to disappear.

Sycamore Partners is looking to take most of its cash out of Staples Inc. through a recapitalization that will saddle the company with roughly $1 billion of additional debt, https://t.co/v7RSCLjxnw

— Carol Forden (@CarolForden) March 25, 2019

Talk about reputations preceding…

Anyway, here’s what the deal would look like once consummated:

That $1b difference is the equity that Sycamore is taking out of the company. What does the company get in return? F*ck all, that’s what. Zip. Zero. Dan Primack also wrote:

Dividend recaps are a mechanism whereby private equity-owned companies issue new debt, and then hand proceeds over to the private equity firm (as opposed to using it to grow the business). Sometimes they don't matter too much. Sometimes they form leveraged anchors around a company's neck. (emphasis added)

Yup. That about sums it up. Here is Sycamore placing a leveraged anchor on…uh…improving “the strategic value” of Staples:

This is the market reacting to Sycamore’s strategy for Staples:

If the above GIF looks familiar, that’s because this is like the Taken series: Sycamore has a very particular set of skills. Skills it has acquired over a very long run. Skills that make them a nightmare for retailers like Staples. They look poised to deploy those particular skills over the course of a repetitive trilogy: the first chapter centered around Aeropostale. And here’s how that ended:

The sequel was Nine West and this is how that ended:

And, well, you get the point. Staples looks like it may be next to experience those very particular skills.

———

Okay, so the above was a bit unfair. In Aeropostale, the company went after Sycamore Partners hard, seeking to ding Sycamore, among others, for equitable subordination and recharacterization of their (secured) claims. Why? Well, Sycamore was not only the company’s term lender (to the tune of $150mm), but it was also a major equity holder with 2 board seats and the majority-owner of Aeropostale’s largest (if not, second largest) merchandise sourcer and supplier, MGF Sourcing Holdings Ltd.

NERD ALERT: for the uninitiated, equitable subordination is an equitable remedy that a bankruptcy court may apply to render justice or right some unfairness alleged by a debtor (or some other party in the shoes of the debtor, if applicable). It is generally VERY DIFFICULT TO WIN on this argument because the burden of proof is on the movant and there are multiple factors and subfactors that the accuser needs to satisfy — because, like, this is the law and so everything has a test, a sub-test, and a sub-sub-test and maybe even a sub-sub-sub-test. Judges love tests, sub-tests, and multi-pronged sub-tests. Three-prongs. Four-prongs. Everywhere a prong prong. Just take our word for it. It’s true.

Recharacterization is another equitable remedy that, if satisfied and granted by the court, would have resulted in Sycamore’s $150mm secured term loan position being reclassified as equity. This is a big deal. This would be like Mike Trout being on the verge of winning the MVP and the World Series AND securing a $350mm 10-year contract only to, on the eve of all of that, get (a) caught partying with R. Kelly til six in the morning with enough PED needles lodged in his butt to kill a team of horses, (b) suspended from baseball, (c) exiled into an early retirement a la Alex Rodriguez or Barry Bonds, and (d) forced into personal bankruptcy like Latrell Sprewell or Antoine Walker. Or, more technically stated, since secured debt is way higher in “absolute priority” than equity, this would instantaneously render Sycamore’s position worthless and juice the potential recovery of unsecured creditors. Then there is the practical side: for this remedy to apply, the bankruptcy court would have to make a “finding” that prong after prong has been satisfied and issue an order saying you’re the shadiest m*therf*cker on the planet because you’re actually dumb and careless enough to have met all of the prongs. So, as you might imagine, this is pretty much the worst case scenario for any secured party in bankruptcy and a career ender for the poor schmo who orchestrated the whole thing.

In Aeropostale, the Debtors argued that Sycamore and its proxy MGF engaged in inequitable conduct prior to Aeropostale’s filing, including (a) breach of contract, (b) “a secret and improper plan to buy Aeropostale at a discount” and (c) improper stock trading while in possession of material non-public information. This one had the added drama of arch enemies Kirkland & Ellis LLP (Sycamore) and Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP (Aeropostale) duking it out to the ego-extreme. Just kidding: this was all about justice! 😜

Anyway, there was a trial with fourteen testifying witnesses over eight presumably PAINFUL days that, in a nutshell, went like this:

WEIL GOTSHAL: “Sycamore are a bunch of conspiratorial PE scumbags who ran this company into the ground, your Honor!”

JUDGE LANE: “Not credible. Good day, sir. I said GOOD DAY!”

KIRKLAND & ELLIS/SYCAMORE:

In the end, Sycamore fared pretty well. They got nearly a full recovery** and releases under the plan of reorganization. Relatively speaking, the company also fared well. It didn’t liquidate.*** Instead, two members of the official committee of unsecured creditors — GGP and Simon Property Group ($SPG)— formed a joint venture with Authentic Brands Group and some liquidators and roughly 5/8 of the stores survived — albeit as a shell of its former self and with heaps of job loss (improved strategic value!!). Sure, millions of dollars were spent pursuing losing claims but that’s exactly the point: when Sycamore is involved, they win**** and others lose.***** The extent of the loss is just a matter of degree.

———

Speaking of degrees, all the while Nine West was lurking in the shadows all like:

WHOA. BOY. THIS ONE WAS A COMPLETE. AND UTTER. NEXT LEVEL. SH*TSHOW.

We’ve discussed Nine West at length in the past. In fact, it won our 2018 Deal of the Year! We suggest you refresh your recollection why (including the links within): it’s worth it. But what was the end result? We’ll discuss that and the (impressively) savage tactics deployed by Sycamore Partners therein in Part II, coming soon to an email inbox near you.

*At the time of this writing, the unsecured bonds last traded at $108.01 according to TRACE. This potentially gives Sycamore the added benefit of booking significant gains on the $71mm of unsecured notes in its portfolio.

**It’s unclear whether Sycamore recovered 100% but given that they got $130mm under the cash collateral order out of an approximately $160mm claim, it’s likely to have been close. Now, they did lose $53mm on AERO stock.

***A f*cking low bar, sure, but still. Have you seen what’s happening in these other retail cases?

****Putting aside nation-wide destruction, hard to blame LPs for investing in the fund. They get returns. Plain and simple. This ain’t ESG investing, people.

*****Sure, Weil “lost” its attempt to nail Kirkland…uh Sycamore…here but they got paid $15.3mm post-petition and $4.4mm pre-petition so that’s probably the best damn consolation prize we’ve ever heard of in the history of mankind. Weil has, to date, also avoided having a chapter 22 and liquidation in its stable of quals so there’s that too. In retail, you have to take the victories where you can get them.

GAIN THAT EXTRA EDGE WITH PETITION, SUBSCRIBE TO OUR KICKA$$ PREMIUM NEWSLETTER HERE.

💸Goldman Sachs Hops Aboard the Mall Short💸

Mall Shorts Gather Steam

In last Wednesday’s “Thanos Snaps, Retail Disappears👿,” we included a LOOOOOONG list of retailers that are shutting down stores. Subsequently, J.Crew Group announced that it is closing a net 10 stores (20 J.Crew locations offset by 10 Madewell openings), Williams-Sonoma Inc. ($WSM) announced that it plans to close a net total of 30 stores, Hibbett Sports Inc. ($HIBB) announced approximately 95 stores will close this year, and Tommy Hilfiger closed its global flagship store on Fifth Avenue (Query: is New York City f*cked?) and its Collins Avenue store in Miami.

The point of the piece, however, wasn’t to wallow in retail carnage: rather, it was to make the point that there’s no way the malls — or at least certain malls — could continue business as usual.* With thousands of stores coming offline, we argued, there have to be malls that start feeling the pain and, eventually, run afoul of their lenders. We used $CBL as our poster child and closed by stating that Canyon Partners was shorting mall-focused CMBS via a CDS index, the Markit CMBX.BBB- (and lower indices).

Apparently Goldman Sachs Inc. ($GS) is in on the action. Late last week, Goldman urged“clients join the "big short" bandwagon by going short CMBX AAA bonds (while hedging in a pair trade by going long five-year investment-grade corporate CDX).” ZeroHedgesummarizes the Goldman report as follows:

Citing the bank's recent review of potential areas of financial imbalance across the US corporate and household sectors, [the Goldman analyst] notes that stretched CRE valuations ranked near the top in terms of risk level; and while a large and immediate commercial property price downturn is not the bank's baseline forecast, "a scenario with falling commercial property prices in the next 1-2 years is one to which we would attach non-negligible probability" the analysts caution.

And, then, in customary hyperbolic form, Zerohedge concludes:

Why is this notable? Because regular readers will recall that the 2007/2008 financial crisis really kicked in only after Goldman's prop desk started aggressively shorting various RMBS tranches, both cash and synthetic, in late 2006 and into 2007 and 2008, with the trade eventually becoming the "big short" that was popularized in the Michael Lewis book.

Will Goldman's reco to short CMBX-6 AAA be the trigger that collapses the house of cards for the second time in a row? While traditionally lightning never strikes twice the same place, the centrally-planned market is now so broken that even conventional idioms have to be redone when it comes to the world's (still) most important trading desk. In any case, keep an eye on commercial real estate prices: while residential markets have already peaked with most MSAs sliding fast, commercial may just be the first domino to drop that unleashes a tsunami of disastrous consequences across the rest of the market.

It is far from certain that all of this noise about shorting CMBS is anything more than isolated trades. One thing that is certain? Zerohedge is better at drumming up fear than Jordan Peele.

*****

Speaking of J.Crew, S&P took a dump all over it yesterday as it downgraded the issuer credit rating to CCC and simultaneously downgraded its “intellectual property notes” — ouch, that must sting some (short asset stripping?) — and its secured term loan facility. The ratings agency maintains a “negative outlook” on the company, saying that “operating results deteriorated considerably in the most recent quarter,” and “approaching maturities of the company’s very high debt burden could lead J.Crew to restructure its debt in the next 12 months.” S&P provides a damning assessment:

We think the company continues to face significant headwinds to turn around operations which haven’t meaningfully improved since the J Crew brand relaunch in 2018. These threats include fast fashion and online retail, as well as continued declines in mall traffic and greater price transparency across the apparel industry. We believe these trends are especially heightened for U.S. mid-priced apparel retail players as consumers shift apparel spending toward brands with a consistent customer message or more appealing prices, given the continued preference for value, freshness, and convenience.

Tell us how you really feel, S&P.

*****

Speaking of damning assessments, there was this flamethrower of a press release issued by Legion Partners Holdings LLC, Macellum Advisors GP LLC, and Ancora Advisors LLC regarding Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. ($BBBY). Burn, baby, burn.

PETITION readers will recall our previous discussion of BBBY. In January in “Is Pier 1 on the Ropes? (Short “Iconic” Brands),” we included discussion of BBBY and declared:

Bed Bath & Beyond swam against the retail tide last week as the company’s stock showed huge gains after it said that it is ahead of its long-term plan and that it is successfully slowing down declines in operating profit and net earnings per share. Which is interesting because, putting forward guidance aside, the ACTUAL numbers weren’t all that great. In fact, the company’s trend of disappointing same-store sales continues unabated (negative 1.8%, worse than forecast). EPS and revenue numbers were slightly better and slightly worse, respectively, than expected. Which means that to drive the higher EPS, the company must be taking costs out of the business. We have no crystal ball and this is in now way meant to be construed as investment advice, but we’re not seeing justification for a massive stock price increase (up 15% from when we wrote about it and 30% from its December 24 low).

Suffice it to say, the aforementioned investors were far from impressed. The press release kicks off with:

“Magnitude of value destruction necessitates wholesale board and leadership changes. CEO Steven Temares has overseen the destruction of more than $8 billion in market value over his 15-year tenure, with total shareholder returns of negative 58%. Since early 2015, the stock has lost over 80% of its value.”

Certainly not mincing words there, that’s for sure.

It then follows with:

Failed retail execution and strategy. Apparent inability to prioritize a long list of poorly implemented initiatives and management’s lack of success in adapting its business model to a changing retail landscape, has resulted in stagnant sales and adjusted EBITDA margins declining from 18% in fiscal 2012 to 7% in the last 12-month period ending November 2018.

Deeply entrenched board lacking retail experience is an impediment to serving shareholder interests. Average director tenure is approximately 19 years and the lack of retail expertise and stale perspectives on the board have hindered proper oversight of the management team.

We mean…those are just cold. Hard. Facts. And they’re not wrong about the board: it strains credulity to think that the Head of the TIAA Institute, a pensioned partner at Proskauer Rose LLP, and an EVP for Verizon Communications Inc. know f*ck all about the travails afflicting retail these days (to be fair: it seems the founder and CEO of Red Antler, a reputable branding agency that has helped build the likes of Casper, Keeps, Boxed, Google, allbirds and Birchbox makes sense…if anything has value here…and, yes, we’re REALLY stretching here…its the, gulp, brand…like, maybe??…or, like, maybe not???).

Seriously, it’s not really difficult to argue with this (even if the investors take some liberties in defining companies like Restoration Hardware ($RH) as “retail peers”):

Problematically, however, the three firms own merely 5% of the outstanding common stock so there’s not a ton that they can do to agitate for change. The market, though, doesn’t seem to give a sh*t: it just wants something…anything…to happen with this business.

More significantly, investors simply cannot sit on the sidelines anymore and watch retail management teams flail in the wind. We discussed certain management teams that really seem to be skating to where the puck is going, see, e.g., $PLCE. But many others aren’t and those that aren’t act at their own peril. Here, at least, investors are putting management and the board of directors on notice.

Expect to see other investors act similarly in other cases.

*There are a number of malls, however, that do seem to be continuing business as usual. This piece makes the point that apocalypse is not as bad as the media makes out.

💤Sears 💤

Eddie Lampert, ESL & Shenanigans

BREAKING NEWS: SHORT SEARS HOLDING CORP.

We’re old enough to remember when Sears Holding Corp. ($SHLD) was last rumored to file for bankruptcy. In 2017. 2016. 2015. 2014. 2013. 2012. 2011. And 2010 (the last year it turned a profit). This thing is like “Karl” in Die Hard.

Or this lady:

It just won’t die.

So this week’s reports that Sears’ CEO Eddie Lampert “Urges Immediate Action to Stave Off Bankruptcy” were met with, shall we say, a collective yawn. Lampert has been performing financial sleight-of-hand for years, all the while the five-year SHLD stock chart looks like this:

This is what the Twitterati had to say about this: [ ].

Yes, that blank space is intentional. We’ve never seen Twitter so quiet. Grandma was like, “Sears? Sears? I last shopped in Sears when I was prom shopping…in 1956.” Mom was like, “I once bought you a Barbie at Sears…in 1989.” Some millennial somewhere was probably like, “Sears? What’s a Sears, brah?”

Just kidding: nobody is talking about Sears. That would imply mindshare. 🔥

Lack of mindshare notwithstanding, the company, despite a wave of closures over the years (including 46 unprofitable stores slated for closure in November ‘18), consists of 820 stores (including KMart). As of 2017, the company had 140,000 employees. Thats Toys R Usx 4.5. The company also has approximately $5.5 billion of debt, $1.1 billion of pension and post-retirement benefits, declining revenues, negative (yet improving) same store sales percentages, negative gross margin, and increasing net losses.

Source: SHLD Q2 Earnings Release Presentation, September 13, 2018

It also had $941mm of cash available as of the end of Q2 2018.

On Sunday, Lampert filed a Schedule 13D with the SEC outlining his proposal to save Sears in advance of a $134 debt payment due on October 15. High level, the proposal was…

“…to the Board requesting Holdings to consider liability management transactions, real estate transactions and asset sales intended to extend near-term debt maturities, reduce long-term debt, eliminate associated cash interest obligations and obtain additional liquidity.”

The proposed liability management transactions…provide for exchange offers to eligible holders of second lien debt…and eligible holders of unsecured debt…. These potential exchange offers together could save Holdings approximately $33 million per year in cash interest and eliminate approximately $1.1 billion in debt.

More specifically, the proposal calls for, among other options, ‘19 and ‘20 second lien debtholders and ‘19 unsecured noteholders to swap into zero-coupon mandatorily convertible secured debt (no yield, baby?)(read the 13D link above for more detail). It also calls for the sale of $3.25 billion worth of real estate and assets, including Sears Home Services and Kenmore.

After all of this time, why now? Per Bloomberg:

Lampert and ESL acted after watching other retailers including Toys “R” Us Inc. and Bon-Ton Stores Inc. wind up in liquidation, according to people with knowledge of the plan. The aim is to get something done out of court to preserve value for shareholders, since they don’t usually fare well in bankruptcy proceedings, said the people, who weren’t authorized to comment publicly and asked not to be identified.

There’s something strangely poetic about Lampert and ESL using the ghosts of Toys R Us and BonTon past to coerce creditors into an exchange transaction now.

Anyway, Twitter may have been quiet, but naysayers abound.

From Bloomberg:

“It seems the next natural iteration of all the financial engineering the company has been engaging in over the last few years,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Noel Hebert said. “For non-bank creditors not named Eddie Lampert, there is a bit of prisoner’s dilemma -- maybe something more tomorrow, or the near certainty of very little today.”

“This is simply storing up trouble for the future,” according to a note from Neil Saunders, managing director of research firm GlobalData Retail. “Sears is focusing on financial maneuvers and missing the wider point that sales remain on a downward trajectory,” he wrote. “Even in a strong consumer economy, customers are still drifting away to other brands and retailers.”

From the Washington Post:

“Eddie Lampert is seeking permission from himself to keep Sears on life-support while he continues to drain every last remaining drop of blood from its corpse,” said Mark Cohen, director of retail studies at Columbia Business School and the former chief executive of Sears Canada. “The operation is a failure, and there is no plan to turn that around."

From the Wall Street Journal:

“Given Lampert’s shuffling of Sears assets in ways some creditors suspect was more to his benefit than theirs, there is a chance they will hesitate to let him reorganize unless it is under the watchful eye of a bankruptcy judge,” said Erik Gordon, a University of Michigan business school professor.

Ugh. Wake us up when its finally over. Even Karl eventually died.

---

PETITION provides analysis and commentary about restructuring and bankruptcy. We discuss disruption, from the vantage point of the disrupted. Get our Members’-only a$$-kicking newsletter by subscribing here.

More Shenanigans in Retail: Neiman Marcus Edition

Retail Schmetail (Long Shenanigans; Long Litigation-Based Investment)

Just when retail was starting to get boring, Neiman Marcus stepped up this week to provide some real entertainment for bond investors. Thanks Neiman Marcus!

First, lending an additional boost the now-popular narrative that the "#retailapocalypse story is over, the luxury department store retailer reported earnings on September 18 that reflected (i) a 2.3% increase in quarterly revenue YOY, (ii) a dramatically reduced Q4 net loss on a YOY basis, and (iii) an increase in adjusted EBITDA. For fiscal year 2018, it reported total revenues of $4.9 billion, a 4.9% increase YOY. Free cash flow was $122.6mm vs. negative $57.7mm last year. Online revenues were up 12.5% for the quarter and accounted for 35% of the overall business.

And that last bit is where the rubber meets the road. At the tail end of its press release, Neiman slipped in this doozy like a slickster:

Subsequent to the end of the fourth quarter, the Company effected an organizational change as a result of which the entities through which the Company operates the MyTheresa business now sit directly under Neiman Marcus Group, Inc., the Company’s ultimate parent entity. These entities were unrestricted, non-guarantor subsidiaries under the Company’s debt instruments. As a result of this change, going forward the financial results of the MyTheresa entities will no longer be included in the Company’s publicly reported financial statements. The change is not expected to meaningfully affect operations for Neiman Marcus or MyTheresa.

Indeed, the company’s term loan and bonds — part of its $4.7 billion debt stack — did trade down but it wasn’t due to misplaced optimism. Rather, it was more likely attributable to the fact that the company, in a Petsmart-PTSD-inducing maneuver, just significantly weakened the bondholder collateral package.

Per the Wall Street Journal:

Before the transfer of MyTheresa to the parent company, Neiman Marcus Group Inc., there was some anticipation that the retailer would use the MyTheresa shares to entice bondholders to swap their debt for bonds with a longer maturity.

“Some bondholders may have incorrectly assumed that the company would embark on a distressed debt exchange involving MyTheresa shares as collateral,” said Steven Ruggiero, an analyst at Pressprich & Co.

It appears so.

James Goldstein, a retail analyst at CreditSights, noted that proceeds from any sale could now go directly to the investment companies that control the Neiman parent company, with bondholders likely having no claim. The parent company is owned by Ares Management LP and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

“MyTheresa was already in an unrestricted subsidiary, but the way it’s structured now proceeds of any sale of MyTheresa goes straight to sponsors’ pockets without having to deal with the bondholders,” Mr. Goldstein said.

For now, this is a (potential) win for pensioners and a loss for hedge funds holding the debt. And one such hedge fund was, shall we say, a wee bit nonplussed. On Friday September 21, Marble Ridge Capital LP sent a letter to the company’s board of directors (and subsequently issued a very public press release about said letter) stating:

"…what these transactions appear to be is an attempt to move the MyTheresa business beyond the reach of existing creditors sitting between the sponsors' equity and the valuable MyTheresa assets. Most troubling, we understand that Ares and CPPIB usurped this massive benefit and took the MyTheresa business for no consideration."

"Marble Ridge has reason to believe that the Company was insolvent at the time of the Transactions or was rendered insolvent thereby. The Company is the issuer and/or guarantor of at least $4.7 billion of indebtedness. Based on LTM EBITDA of $478.2 million, the Company's indebtedness prior to the Transactions implies nearly a 10x leverage multiple (far in excess of any of its peers). Moreover, a dividend or other form of a spinoff by an insolvent guarantor to its equity sponsors, for no consideration, has all the hallmarks of an intentional or constructive fraudulent transfer (or illegal dividend) and raises serious questions of breaches of duties of care and loyalty, with exposure for Ares and CPPIB, as controlling shareholders, and for the Company's board. As noted above, Marble Ridge also has concerns that the Transactions do not comply with the Indentures."

The Wall Street Journal had previously reported that:

Neiman Marcus hired Lazard Ltd. and Kirkland & Ellis last year for advice on how to restructure its debt.

Looks like they deployed some of that advice.

What to Make of the Credit Cycle. Part 14. Refinitiv Edition.

Long Blackstone. Short Market Timing.

🎶 Sing it with us now: “Yield, baby, yield.” 🎼

Let’s pretend for a second that you’re a trader “sitting on the desk” of a fund with a high yield mandate. Limited partners have given your Portfolio Manager millions upon millions (if not billions) of dollars to get access to — and active management of — high yield debt. They expect your PM and the team to deploy that capital. That’s what you said you’d do when you were out pounding the pavement fundraising. They don’t want to pay you whatever your management fee is for you to simply be sitting in cash, waiting on the sidelines counting your “dry powder.” So when a big issuance goes out to market, you’ve got to make your move. The pressure is on.

The first order of business it to simply make sure that you even get in the room. You’d better be on your game. There’s a lot of appetite for yield these days, so you better be working those phones, dialing up that “left lead” clown you suffered beers with a few weeks back with the hope of getting an opportunity to put in an allocation. You’re dialing and dialing and hoping that he doesn’t remember that your PM passed on — much to your chagrin — the last 4 or 5 looks that clown — let’s call him Krusty — gave you. Fingers crossed.

Your PM is pacing behind you. It’s creeping you out. Angst fills the room. The desk lawyer is running around screaming bloody hell about some covenants or something. Maybe it was a lack thereof. You’re not sure. You don’t care, damn it. Those LPs want that money deployed so you’re damn well gonna deploy it. Forget about covenants. Forget about risk. That lawyer can pound sand. Literally nobody cares. Because you and your team are super savvy. Surely you’ll be able to dump these turds of loans and bonds before the market speaks and the debt trades down. Or before all liquidity dries up. Either way, you’ll get out. You’re sure of it. Market timing is your jam.

You finally get through. Krusty says “what’s your number?” You turn to your PM and without much time to really crunch numbers — after all, the yield, the potential discount, the Euro piece vs. the US piece all keep changing — he shrugs and throws out a hefty number. And then does the Sam Cassell dance. You smile. There’s momentarily silence on the other end. Finally, Krusty says he’ll call you back; he seems wildly unimpressed. Your PM shrinks.

You know this same scene is playing out on trading desks all over Wall Street time and time again when there’s a juicy new issuance.

And so does Blackstone. So does Refinitiv.

This week the high yield universe worked itself into a tizzy as Refinitiv priced and issued $13.5 billion of debt to finance Blackstone’s multi-billion dollar ~55% takeover of Thomson Reuters’ Financial & Risk division. Why is this a big deal? Well, in part, because its a big deal. And the lack of (high yield) supply has led to pent up demand. Pent up demand can lead to some interesting compromises.

On September 8, the International Financing Review wrote:

The debt package is divided into US$8bn of loans and US$5.5bn of high-yield bonds. Those debts, combined with separate payment-in-kind notes (with a 14.5% coupon), will result in annual interest payments of US$880m at current price talk. A separate US$750m revolving credit facility will also need servicing.

“The banks had no choice but to price it attractively and it’ll be interesting to see how it goes,” a loan investor in London said. (emphasis added).

Furthermore,

The deal is being marketed with leverage of 4.25 times secured and 5.25 times unsecured, based on adjusted Ebitda of US$2.5bn, which includes US$650m of cost savings from the business’s reported Ebitda of US$1.9bn.

Wait. Take a step back. Cost savings? What cost savings? Blackstone is claiming that they can take $650mm out of the business thereby driving the leverage ratio down. That’s quite a gamble for investors to take. Particularly combined with loose interpretations of EBITDA and considerable add-backs.

The International Financing Review quoted some investors:

A portfolio manager in London said that he had calculated that leverage for the deal is “nearer six and seven times”.

“It’s very late cycle. I don’t really like it when you see a deal with this order of magnitude of projected cost savings as you really don’t know if and when they will be realised,” he said.

“It will be a bit of a test for the market given the size of the deal. But Blackstone and its partners have a good reputation and deep pockets.”

Moody’s and Fitch put leverage between 6.1x and 7.6x.

Covenant Review was nonplussed about the bond protections. It wrote:

“The notes are being marketed with extremely defective sponsor-style covenants riddled with flaws and loopholes that reflect the worst excesses of covenant erosion over the last two years.”

Tell us how you really feel.

Reuters channeled the ghosts of TXU:

The return of big buyouts to the leveraged finance market has rekindled memories of the 2006 and 2007 bad old days of risky underwriting and excessive debt.

So, in the end, how DID the issuance go?

The Wall Street Journal wrote:

One of the largest-ever sales of speculative-grade debt was completed with ease on Tuesday, a sign of the favorable environment for U.S. borrowers at a time of robust economic growth and strong demand from investors.

The $13.5 billion sale—which a Blackstone Group LP-led investor group is using to acquire a 55% stake in a Thomson Reuters Corp. data business called Refinitiv—comprised $9.25 billion of loans and $4.25 billion of secured and unsecured bonds, with different pieces denominated in U.S. dollars and euros.

Including a $750 million revolving credit line, the bond-and-loan deal amounted to the ninth-largest leveraged financing on record in the U.S. and Europe, and was the fourth-largest since the financial crisis, according to LCD, a unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Said another way, demand was so high for the issuance that — aside from upsizing the loan component by $1.25 billion (with a corresponding bond decrease) and a reduction of future permitted debt incurrence — the company was able to offer bond investors LOWER interest rates at par, despite the fact that both Moody’s and S&P Global Ratings rated the issuance near the bottom of the ratings spectrum. Read: thanks to fervent demand, the banks were able to price a wee bit less aggressively than originally planned. That includes the loans: the company was also able to decrease the original guided discount (“OID”) for investors.

Per Bloomberg, orders…

“…total[ed] double the $13.5 billion of bonds and loans it needed to raise. The scale of the response was spurred on by a ravenous bid from collateralized loan obligations and other investors amid fears that there may be fewer new deals going into the fourth quarter."

🎶 One more time: “Yield, baby, yield.” 🎼

So here you had a 2x over-subscription despite some troubling characteristics:

High leverage wasn’t the only way Refinitiv has tested investors. Under the proposed terms of its bonds, the company could pay dividends to its owners even if it came under severe financial distress, a provision that the research firm Covenant Review described as “wildly off market.”

Back to International Financing Review quoting a high yield investor:

“It got to the point where the only thing I liked about the (Refinitiv) deal was the yield. And I’ve learned after 25 years in this business, that’s not enough.”

Among his concerns were business challenges that the Refinitiv business has already faced from competitors like Bloomberg and FactSet. But Blackstone’s ambitious cost-savings target also made him leery.

“When you look at the investment thesis of the sponsor, it’s very much about achieving cost synergies,” said the investor.

“The synergies they forecast are based on their story that they know how to do this better as sponsors than the corporate parent.”

Reasonable minds can debate the merits and reality of sponsor-driven cost “synergies.” But let’s be honest. Nobody is investing in this capital structure because they are whole-hearted endorsers of the Blackstone-promulgated cost-reduction narrative.

“Among the rationales for investors is confidence in the economy - it’s looking good right now, it’s looking good next year, and the belief that they can sell before the quality of the debt deteriorates,” Christina Padgett, a senior vice-president at Moody’s, told IFR.

In other words, market timing is their jam.

The Rise of Net-Debt Short Activism (Short Low Default Rates)

Aurelius Goes After Windstream Holdings Inc. 

🤓Another nerd alert: this is about to get technical.🤓

With default rates low, asset prices high, and a system awash with heaps of green, investors are under pressure by LPs and looking for ways to generate returns. They’ll manufacture them if needs be. These forces help explain the recent Hovnanian drama, the recent McClatchey drama and, well, basically anything involving credit default swaps (“CDS”) nowadays. To point, the fine lawyers at Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz (“WLRZ”) write:

The market for corporate debt does not immediately lend itself to the same kind of “activism” found in equity markets.  Bondholders, unlike shareholders, do not elect a company’s board or vote on major transactions.  Rather, their relationship with their borrower is governed primarily by contract.  Investors typically buy corporate debt in the hope that, without any action on their part, the company will meet its obligations, including payment in full at maturity.

In recent years, however, we have seen the rise of a new type of debt investor that defies this traditional model.

Right. We sure have. Boredom sure is powerful inspiration. Anyway, WLRZ dubs these investors the “net-short debt activist” investor.

The net-short debt activist investor has a particular modus operandi. First, the investor sniffs around the credit markets trolling for transactions that arguably run afoul of debt document covenants (we pity whomever has this job). Once the investor identifies a potential covenant violation, it scoops up the debt (the “long” position”) while contemporaneously putting on a short position by way of CDS (which collects upon a default). The key, however, is that the latter is a larger position than the former, making the investor “net short.” Relying on its earlier diligence, the investor then publicly declares a covenant default and, if it holds a large enough position (25%+ of the issuance), can serve a formal default notice to boot. The public nature of all of this is critical: the investor knows that the default and/or notice will move markets. And that’s the point: after all, the investor is net short.

In the case of a formal notice, all of this also puts the target in an unenviable position. It now needs to go to court to obtain a ruling that no default has occurred. Absent that, the company is in a world of hurt. WLRK writes:

Unless and until that ruling is obtained, the company faces the risk not only that the activist will be able to accelerate the debt it holds, but also that other financial debt will be subject to cross defaults and that other counterparties of the company — such as other lenders, trade creditors, or potential strategic partners — may hesitate to conduct business with the company until the cloud is lifted.  

Savage. Coercive. Vicious. Long low default rate environments!

In the case of Little Rock Arkansas-based Windstream Holdings Inc. ($WIN), a provider of voice and data network communications services, all of this is especially relevant.

To continue reading, you must be a PETITION Member. Join here. 

Hedge Fund Fees Are on the Decline

Here’s a fact check if you’re of the view that there’s a tremendous amount of growth potential in the hedge fund world:

Yes, management and performance fees both continue to ratchet downward. If there’ll be an “active management” renaissance, it’ll have to happen at a discount, apparently.

Oil & Gas (Short Underwriting & Defaults)

Sometimes distressed investing returns get upended by practical realities. The question is: were those realities accounted for in the underwriting?

To continue reading, you must be a PETITION Member. Become one here.

Distressed Debt Opportunities (Long Boredom)

Jason Mudrick of Mudrick Capital was on Bloomberg TV on Friday and...

To continue reading, you must be a PETITION Member. Become one here.

Distressed Debt Funds Fundraise (Long Market Timing)

At the Wharton Distressed Investing Conference in late February, Marathon Capital Management’s Bruce Richards said that his firm was delaying fundraising new capital. He noted that while he fully expects the cycle to turn and, consequently, that there’ll be a plentiful amount of distressed opportunities, he doesn’t want to mis-time the raise in such a way that his lock-up will expire midway through the investment horizon.

It seems others are of the view that now is the time. Per The Financial Times:

A growing number of US hedge funds specialising in distressed debt are raising money in anticipation that the next economic downturn will punish companies that have borrowed record amounts since the financial crisis.

Mudrick Capital, for instance, is reportedly raising a second fund that will have a five-year lockup and only charge fees upon capital investment. The fundraising goal is December 1. Carry the 1, add the 5, and that effectively means that he’ll have through 2024 to invest.

Marathon Capital had better hope there are still LPs out there looking to fund the asset class. More from FT:

Mudrick Capital is not the only fund preparing for an eventual downturn in a US economy where growth is accelerating this quarter. Strategic Value Partners in May raised almost $3bn to pounce on distressed bonds and loans, while Sheru Chowdhry, formerly co-portfolio manager of the Paulson Credit Opportunities fund, launched DSC Meridian Capital at the start of June.

In total, seven distressed debt funds have raised money this year, with a record average size of $2.2bn, according to data from Preqin. The largest is the GSO Capital Solutions Fund III, which closed in April after drumming up $7.4bn in the fourth-biggest distressed debt fundraising ever.

With tariffs, a trade war, rising interest rates, ramifications relating to tax deductibility in Tax Reform, secular pressures, auto loan delinquencies and more, many people seem to think a downturn is on the horizon. The question is when? Someone is bound to get the timing right.

What to Make of the Credit Cycle (Part 4)

We’ve spent a considerable amount of space discussing what to make of the credit cycle. Our intent is to give professionals a well-rounded view of what to expect now that we’re in year 8/9 of a bull market. You can read Parts one (Members’ only), two, and three (Members’ only), respectively.

Interestingly, certain investors have become impatient and apparently thrown in the towel. Is late 2019 or early 2020 too far afield to continue pretending to deploy a distressed investing strategy? Or are LPs anxious and pulling funds from underperforming or underinvested hedge funds? Is the opportunity set too small - crap retail and specialized oil and gas - for players to be active? Are asset values too high? Are high yield bonds priced too high? All valid questions (feel free to write in and let us know what we’re missing: petition@petition11.com).

In any event, The Wall Street Journal highlights:

A number of distressed-debt hedge funds are abandoning traditional loan-to-own strategies after years of low interest rates resulted in meager returns for investors. Some are even investing in equities.

PETITION Note: funny, last we checked an index fund doesn’t charge 2 and 20.

The WSJ continues,

BlueMountain Capital Management LLC and Arrowgrass Capital Partners LLP are some of the bigger funds that have shifted away from this niche-investing strategy. And lots of smaller funds have closed shop.

A number of smaller distressed-debt investors have closed down, including Panning Capital Management, Reef Road Capital and Hutchin Hill Capital.

PETITION Note: the WSJ failed to include TCW Group’s distressed asset fund. What? Too soon?

We should note, however, that there are several other platforms that are raising (or have raised) money for new distressed and/or special situations, e.g., GSO and Knighthead Capital Management.

Still is the WSJ-reported capitulation a leading indicator of increased distressed activity to come? Owl Creek Asset Management LP seems to think so. The WSJ writes,

Owl Creek founder Jeffrey Altman, however, believes that if funds are shutting down and moving away from classic loan-to-own strategies then a big wave of restructuring is around the corner. “If anything, value players leaving credit makes me feel more confident that the extended run-up credit markets have been enjoying may finally be ending,” Mr. Altman said.

One’s loss is another’s opportunity.

*****

Speaking of leading indicators(?) and opportunity, clearly there are some entrepreneurial (or masochistic?) investors who are prepping for increased distressed activity. In December, The Carlyle Group ($CG), via its Carlyle Strategic Partners IV L.P. fund, announced a strategic investment in Prime Clerk LLC, a claims and noticing administrator based in New York (more on Prime Clerk below). Terms were not disclosed — though sources tell us that the terms were rich. Paul Weiss Rifkind & Wharton LLP served as legal counsel and Centerview Partners as the investment banker on the transaction.

On April 19th, Omni Management Group announced that existing management had teamed up with Marc Beillinson and affiliates of the Beilinson Advisory Group (Mark Murphy and Rick Kapko) to purchase Omni Management Group from Rust Consulting. Terms were not disclosed here either. We can’t imagine the terms here were as robust as those above given the market share differential.

The point is: some opportunistic folk sure seem to think that there’s another cycle coming. And they’re putting their money where their mouth is, thinking that there will be money to be made in the (seemingly saturated) case administration business. Time will tell.

Caesars = "One of the Great Messes of Our Time"?

The Embattled Caesars Entertainment is FINALLY out of Bankruptcy

Last week we highlighted this tweet that poked fun at recent asset stripping (aka dropdown financing) strategies. Great timing, if we do say so ourselves, as Caesars Entertainment has finally emerged from bankruptcy. Not great timing? This (note our reply).

To commemorate Caesars' accomplishment, the Financial Times published this post-mortem (warning: firewall). It’s a solid read. 

A few bits we wanted to highlight:

THIS is understanding who is boss: “One hedge fund investor wondered, then, if the advice of bankers was intrinsically tainted. ‘Private equity firms cut a wide swath,’ the investor said. ‘You do not want to cross them and risk the golden goose.’”

THIS is how you advocate for your client: 

“…[A] lawyer at Paul Weiss who represented the parent Caesars company controlled by Apollo and TPG and who is the longtime outside counsel to Apollo, responded: “I have been a restructuring and bankruptcy lawyer for 28 years and I do not believe David Sambur was more difficult in the Caesars case than anyone else nor in any other transaction I have worked on. David was completely fair and responsible.’” Hahaha. What else is he going to say about his “longtime” client? “Yeah, sure, FT, he was the biggest a$$ imaginable.” Talk about not wanting to cross and risk the golden goose. P.S. Mr. Sambur is now on the board of the reorganized entity. Sounds like a solid source of recurring revenue for a loyal...uh, we mean, commercial, lawyer. 

THIS is key advice (in the comments) to in-house legal representing bondholders: “‘Baskets’. Devil in the detail [sic]”. See, e.g., J.Crew. Haha. YOU THINK?

P.S. There appears to be some healthy skepticism about Caesars' long term outlook. 

Where is the Restructuring Work?

Strong Voices in Finance Are Raising the Alarm

We have some very exciting things planned for the Fall that we cannot wait to share with you. Until then, we'll be channeling our inner John Oliver and spending the rest of the summer researching and recharging. Oh, and structuring our imminent ICO in a way that (i) circumvents the SEC's recent decision noting that ICOs are securities offerings and (ii) gives all current PETITION subscribers a first look at participation. Don't know what we're talking about? For a crash course, read this, this, and this. The ICO stuff is BANANAS and, yes, we're TOTALLY KIDDING about doing one. We are not kidding, however, about our planned Summer break. We'll be back in September with the a$$-kicking curated weekly commentary you've come to know and love. In the meantime, please regularly check out our website petition11.com, our LinkedIn account, and our Twitter feed (@petition) for new content throughout August. 

But before we ride off to the Lake, a few thoughts (and a longer PETITION than usual)...

There has been a marked drop-off in meaningful bankruptcy filings the last several weeks and people are gettin' antsy. Where is the next wave going to come from? A few weeks ago, Bloomberg noted that there was a dearth of restructuring deal flow and a lot of (restructuring) mouths to feed. Bloomberg also reported that, given where bond prices/yields are, bank traders are so bored that they're filling their days by Tindering and video-gaming like bosses rather than...uh...trading. (You're not going to want to thumb-wrestle millennials.) These trends haven't stopped the likes of Ankura Consulting from announcing - seemingly on a daily basis - a new Managing Director or Senior Managing Director hire (misplaced optimism? Or a leading indicator?). No surprise, then, that financial advisors and bankers are whipping themselves into a frenzy in an attempt to complement Paul Weiss as advisors to a potential ad hoc group in Guitar Center Inc. (yes, people do buy guitars online on Amazon and, yes, $1.1b of debt is a lot given declining trends in guitar playing). Even the media is getting desperate: now the Financial Times is pontificating on the "short retail" trade (firewall; good charts within) that others have been discussing for a year or so. The internet is impacting shopping malls (firewall)? YOU DON"T SAY! Commercial mortgage delinquencies are rising (firewall)? NO WAY! We've gotten to the point that in addition to having nothing to do, no one actually has anything original to say. 

That is, almost no one. After all, there is always Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital Management, who, once again, demonstrates how much fun he must be at parties. Damn this was good. Looooong, but good. And you have to read it. Boiled down to its simplest form he's asking this very poignant question: what the f&*K is going on? Why? Well, because:
(i) we now see some of the highest equity valuations in history;
(ii) the VIX index is at an all-time low;
(iii) the trajectory of can't-lose stocks is staggering, see, e.g., FAANG (though, granted, Amazon ($AMZN) and Alphabet ($GOOGL) both got taken down a notch this week);
(iv) more than $1 trillion has moved into value-agnostic investing;
(v) we're seeing the lowest yields in history on low-rated bonds/loans (and cov lite is rampant again);
(vi) we're seeing even lower yields on emerging market debt;
(vii) there's gangbusters PE fundraising (PETITION NOTE: we'd add purchase price multiple expansion and, albeit on a much smaller scale, gangbusters VC fundraising);
(viii) there is the rise of the biggest fund of all time raised for levered tech investing (Softbank); and
(ix) bringing this full circle to where we started above, there are now "billions in digital currencies whose value has multiplied dramatically" - even taking into account a small pullback.

Maybe we really should consider an ICO after all. 

And then there's also Professor Scott Galloway. He, admittedly, looks at "softer metrics" and highlights various signals that show "we're about to get rocked" in this piece, a sample of which follows (read the whole thing: it's worth it...also the links): 

We don't think he's kidding, by the way. Anyway, we here at PETITION would add a few other considerations:

1. The Phillips Curve. Current macro trends countervail conventional thinking about the relationship between unemployment and inflation/wages (when former down, the latter should be up...it's not);
2. The FED. Nobody, and we mean NOBODY, knows what will happen once the FED earnestly begins cleansing its balance sheet and raising rates; 
3. (Potentially) Fraudulent Nonsense Always Happens Near the Top. SeeHampton Creek. See Theranos. See Exxon ($XOM). See Caterpillar ($CAT). See Martin Shkreli. And note worries about Non-GAAP earnings;
4. Auto loans. Delinquencies are on the rise; and
5. Student loans. Delinquencies are on the rise.

We're not even going to mention the dumpster fire that is Washington DC these days (random aside: is anyone actually watching House of Cards or is reality enough?). 

And, finally, not to steal anyone's thunder but one avid biglaw reader added that a telltale sign of an imminent downturn is the rise of biglaw associate salaries. Haha. At least there are wage increases SOMEWHERE.

All of the above notwithstanding, even Marks cautions against calling an imminent downturn admitting, upfront and often, how he has been premature in the past. That said, nobody saw oil going from $110 to $30 as quickly as it did either. So he's right to be highlighting these issues now. At a minimum, it ought to give investors a lot of pause. And, perversely, this all ought to give restructuring professionals a little bit of hope for what may lay ahead for '18 and '19. 

Have a fun and safe rest of Summer, everyone. Don't miss us too much.

Busted Hedge Funds and Fund BS

Busted Hedge Funds & Fund BS

Last week we noted the imminent closure of Blackstone's distressed-debt hedge fund. Here's more about it - and about illiquid funds generally. It's been a rough year+ for hedge funds.

And speaking of alpha (cough), we can't think of a better argument for 2-and-20 than getting profoundly middle-of-the-plate market advice like shorting retail! What genius!! C'mon Lasry. With hedge funds under siege, you'd think that someone with the reputation of Lasry could conjure up some originality here and actually "deliver 'alpha'" - whatever that means these days.

In the even-less-alpha category, Eric Mindich is closing his $7b hedge fund, Eton Park Capital Management LP, after a flat '17 and a 9% loss in '16 - a year when millennials putting money into an index fund through Acorns and/or Wealthfront returned 12%. According to the WSJ piece linked above, the one thing Mindich is delivering is "more of the same," considering over 1000 hedge funds closed shop last year - giving new significance to the derogatory descriptor "hedge fund hotel" (Valeant Pharmaceuticals and SunEdison, anyone?). We particularly loved the kicker in the WSJ piece which was that the closure was "party due to concerns declining assets would make it harder to retain employees," a mind-boggling assertion that, if true, merely reflects a lack of awareness that (a) again, 1000+ funds have failed in the last year (see, e.g., Perry Capital, as just one large example), (b) hedge funders everywhere are screaming bloody murder about comp (as always - such whiners), and (c) it should, at least conceptually, be pretty difficult for those employees to find an alternative with such an atrocious track record looming like an albatross. Finally, as one banker subscriber wrote in to us,  "Because they'd rather not have jobs?" Riiiiiiight. 

But have no fear. Management probably needs a few lifetimes to burn through the billions of dollars earned to date. Maybe Mindich will even join the bevy of Goldman brethren moving to Washington DC. Nothing would surprise us. This failure notwithstanding, he could always change course in a few years after a downturn and give it another go. He'll get money: hedge fund failures are like tech failures. In the absence of gross negligence or actual fraud, they're almost assured of getting a second bite at the apple from sycophantic suck-up former investors who want in on the next big shiny finance vehicle...