30 Jul Voya Senior Loan Group – ‘Talking Points’ Weekly Update
Voya Senior Loan ‘Talking Points’ is a weekly publication from the Voya Senior Loan Team Heads, which provides key insights and results in the Senior Loan marketplace.
Riding the Wave
Robust activity drove the U.S. loan market last week, and issuers expectedly sought to capitalise on these market dynamics with a slate of opportunistic deals. The index gained 0.13%, with the average bid for loans increasing three bps to 94.06.
Refinancings, dividend recapitalisations, and repricings dominated the twenty new transactions in market this week, while organic new issue remains persistently under-represented as market participants eagerly await pending M&A-related issuance. Net of the approximately $26.09 billion of anticipated repayments that are not associated with the forward calendar, the amount of pending repayments still exceeds visible supply, by $1.79 billion. The average Single B yield ticked up five bps to 5.73%, while BBs widened from 4.14% to 4.25%.
In the secondary market the wave of rising prices that built from a post-Brexit trough appears to have reached a relative crest, with the par segment of the market nudging against a topside limit, though high beta credits continue to push upward.