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Financial sponsors have flooded a hot loan market with debt financings to raise dividends, taking advantage of seemingly relentless inflows and CLO formation to extract cash from their portfolio companies as well as reduce their cost of borrowing.

Blackstone is among the sponsors leading the charge, with dividend deals for several of its portfolio companies including bank deposit tech firm IntraFi Network and mobile marketing platform Liftoff (which just brought on General Atlantic as a minority shareholder) — both of which just raised similar dividend deals late last year.

Pump and power equipment company SPX Flow got involved last week with a new $175m add-on to its 2029 to pay a dividend to its sponsor Lone Star Funds.

The renewed round of dividend deals accompanies a surge of repricing activity as sponsors look to extract cash from strong companies to generate returns for their investors at a time when rates remain high, weighing on exit opportunities.

"Because of market conditions where equity multiples are still quite elevated and rates are high, selling companies or exiting some of the PE deals has been challenging and an alternative to pay some of the LPs has been dividend deals,” said a credit strategist.

“[Dividend deals] provide some return to those investors, given market conditions haven't favored PE exits yet. If you think to start the year, a lot of sell side shops had assumed three to four rate cuts. And here we are in August and still debating whether we're going to get any this year.”

Both trends are ultimately being supported by demand outstripping supply for new loans, even as the LevFin market largely shrugs off poor jobs data that sparked spread widening on Friday 1 August.

July might have been busy in the primary market, but it was the heaviest month of the year so far for CLO creation, according to 9fin data, creating a lot of hungry loan vehicles to fill.

According to JP Morgan figures, net new money loan supply of $14.2bn during the month was outstripped by $24bn of CLO origination (excluding refinancing and resets).

Here are some of the highlights of the in-market dividend deals:

Liftoff

Software company Liftoff is looking to fund a $285m dividend to its sponsors Blackstone and General Atlantic, the latter of which just closed a minority investment in the business one month ago.

Morgan Stanley is leading a B3/B- rated $1.855bn TLB due 2032 that’s talked at 400bps over SOFR with a 99 OID. Commitments are due 7 August. Request a copy of 9fin’s Credit QuickTake on the deal here.

Two dividend payouts in rapid succession signals the company’s aggressive financial policy and will raise leverage about a turn to above 7.5x, according to Moody’s and S&P.

However, the company is tapping investors for a dividend from a position of strength — its investment in AI advertising technology began to pay off last year and has driven “faster-than-industry core revenue expansion”, according to S&P, which changed its outlook on the company’s rating to positive from stable.

Genesys

AI is fueling a similar growth trend at Genesys.

Hellman & Friedman and Permira are on track to extract around $2bn from the call center software provider, which they’ve owned since 2012.

The company just announced a $1.5bn investment from Salesforce and Servicenow that will be used to repurchase equity from existing shareholders. The investment is expected to close at the end of the company’s 2026 fiscal year.

On top of that, Goldman Sachs is shopping a $500m fungible add-on to its existing TLB due 2032 to fund a dividend. Price talk is an OID of 99.5-99.75 on the S+250bps paper.

The company has benefited from demand from corporate clients for third party, AI-driven solutions for customer service platforms.

The Genesys platform reached nearly $2.1bn annual recurring revenue during the first quarter of the company’s fiscal year 2026 (1 February – 30 April, 2025), according to the company. This represented year-over-year growth over 35%, while average quarterly net revenue retention exceeded 120% for the last four fiscal quarters.

IntraFi

Blackstone-backed IntraFi, one of the big winners from the regional banking crisis in 2023, is a habitual dividend-raiser — this week it’s in market with a $650m incremental first lien TLB due 2031 to pay a dividend, which is at least its fifth since late 2023.

The company provides the fee-generating technology that facilitates reciprocal deposits in the US banking system, in which banks share large customer deposits to increase FDIC insurance coverage.

Demand boomed after the banking crisis in 2023 — revenues were up 60% that year, and were expected to grow another 20% in 2024, according to Moody’s. The company’s ratings have even improved despite repeated leveraging transactions, with upgrades to B2/B in the second half of last year.

Morgan Stanley is marketing the $650m TLB due 2031 at S+400bps and 99, alongside a $815m 2L TLB due 2032 to refinance existing 2L debt, which is talked at S+575bps and 99.

BGIS

Canadian facilities management business BGIS, which is owned by CCMP Capital Advisors, is shopping a $165m add-on for a dividend. The real estate sector has seen a handful of refinancing deals lately, suggesting sentiment is improving on the outlook for commercial properties.

The company issued a $65m add-on to the same loan in June to fund general corporate purposes including tuck-in M&A.

Investors have supported deals from REITs including Blackstone Mortgage Trust, which just slashed 100bps from its 2029 loan coupon with a repricing, and Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance, which tightened and accelerated a loan refinancing in June.

Playcore

Playground equipment maker Playcore is out with a $225m incremental TLB due 2030 that will mostly be used to fund a dividend to Court Square Capital Partners, which has held the business since 2017.

The sponsor moved the company into a continuation fund led by Sage Equity Investors in November 2024.

Court Square has taken roughly $1bn of dividends from the business since the start of 2024, according to Moody’s, bringing leverage up to around 4.9x this year up from 2.7x in 2023 prior to the distributions, based on the agency’s calculations. Its ratings were unchanged as leverage is within the expected range and the company produces strong FCF, estimated at around $90m for 2025.

Playcore is offering lenders a 12.5bps consent fee to lenders to agree to a one-time restricted payments waiver to facilitate the transaction, along with other amendments to give the company more operating flexibility, according to a source familiar with the deal. The add-on is talked at a 99.5 OID and a 375bps spread over SOFR.

Cooper Machinery

A $700m debut deal for gas infrastructure parts supplier Cooper Machinery Services highlights two big themes of recent LevFin activity — on top of funding a $250m dividend to sponsor Arcline, the TLB is another example of private credit facilities being refinanced in syndicated debt markets to take advantage of cheaper pricing.

BMO is arranging the deal, with a lender call set for 10am ET on 5 August.

Moody’s and Fitch assigned B2/B ratings to the company, estimating around $35m-$50m of annual FCF and leverage around 6x. This marks the third dividend payout in the last five years, according to Moody’s.