Less Blessed, More Stressed

The past 18 months will be remembered by some as a period when there wasn’t much you couldn’t refinance. Stressed names aplenty came, saw, and conquered a financing market that was deeply forgiving of shortcomings in company fundamentals, relying on ambitious pre-Covid – or heavily adjusted – earnings to market bond refinancings. 

But as the year drew to a close, the repricing of riskier names in October/November seen through a 50-75bps widening from September tights in Single-Bs, and a couple of failed refinancing attempts (such as Lowen Play which flipped into restructuring) provides some anecdotal evidence that sentiment may be shifting. Some names may have missed out, and now find themselves in a slightly more precarious position than the 2021 crop with less favourable financing conditions.

Last July, we published our inaugural Blessed to be Stressed report, looking at issuers who we thought could have followed the likes of Aston Martin, Pure Gym and Boparan (to name a few) that completed unlikely refinancings of impending maturities.

Following our McLaren preview – who subsequently got their stressed refi over the line in July – we turned our attention to Lowen Play, Haya Real Estate, Raffinerie Heide and Matalan. Lowen has already announced a restructuring plan, and Haya appears to be destined for a similar outcome, so we have removed these two from the updated report.

In the first part of our updated report we take a look at Baltic gaming operator Olympic Entertainment and value apparel retailer Takko. We will follow this up with reports on German developer Corestate Capital and spandex clothing manufacturer Lycra, as well as revisiting Raffinerie Heide and Matalan to update for recent developments.