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Deals continue to flow through the primary market like the gravy dressing your mashed potatoes and turkey this week (assuming you’ve opted for the traditional Thanksgiving menu).

Borrowers and their bankers have jumped at the opportunity to issue ahead of the holiday season, after an encouraging consumer price index report in early November sparked a rally in credit.

The pace of new launches slowed a little ahead of the holiday weekend, but plenty of recently announced syndications made it over the finish line — and Sabre Corporation priced a quick drive-by bond deal on Monday.

Loose ends that were tied up this week include deals for online retail company Rakuten, insurance company Amynta and Playa Hotels & Resorts. All of these were announced last week, and were done and dusted by the time people started logging off for the holiday.

Banks also managed to offload some TLB debt for Nielsen’s take private deal after a long and winding syndication process.

Underwriters could still look to syndicate other LBO debt such as Tenneco and Twitter, but they are running out of time if they want to clear the backlog before the end of the year.

“The motivation of the banks is simple, they don't want to be sitting on these deals going into year end,” said Jason Greenblath, a PM and director of corporate credit research for American Century Investments. “Most want to start the year fresh and clear the decks.”

Sponsors Brookfield Business Partners and Evergreen Coast (Elliott Management’s private equity arm) closed their take-private deal for Nielsen in October, and the banks that funded the deal have since been working to syndicate the debt to institutional investors.

Like many of the hung LBOs we’ve seen in recent months, the syndication has been complicated. Underwriters finally offloaded a chunk of TLB debt backing the deal on Tuesday, but less than they had originally hoped.

When the bond portion of the debt package launched at the start of November, the BofA-led bank syndicate said they hoped to raise some $3.35bn in the dollar TLB, according to presentation materials at the time (our credit team broke down the transaction here).

But after the bond priced, the loan was initially launched a couple of weeks later at a size of just $1.5bn.

Ultimately, with the market rally since the CPI print, the banks were able to increase the TLB to $2.1bn, pricing it at S+CSA+500bp with an OID of 89. The euro TLB tranche was downsized to €300m, from €500m at launch.

It was a decent outcome, especially given that the deal was hung. But the steep discount reflects the challenges of offloading paper that was underwritten months ago in today’s much wider market.

Nielsen was viewed as a stronger credit than some of the other hung LBOs in the pipeline, but it is still adapting to the new digital TV landscape. We’ll be closely watching its measurement of the biggest Thursday night football event of the year, now streaming on Amazon.

Travel sector borrowers such as Sabre and Playa Hotels & Resorts had success in primary this week. Executives looked to reassure lenders that the rebound in travel and tourism still has some room to run, despite an expected economic downturn.

Playa’s performance is strong, with occupancy levels running higher than 2019 levels. That’s partly helped by two new locations in the Dominican Republic, alongside the benefits of renovations and added rooms at other sites.

This week, the group priced a $1.1bn TLB at S+425bps with an OID of 96.5, which was tight to price talk in the area of S+450bps and 96.

Sanctuary Cap Cana, drinks are freeee (via Playa Hotels)

Resort operators like Playa are clearly bullish. But the threat of a looming downturn is the risk that investors were weighing this week as Sabre, which provides booking-related technology for the travel sector, came to the market with a refinancing deal of its own.

The company priced $555m 11.25% SSNs due 2027 on Monday, at a discount to yield 11.75%. Proceeds will be used to refinance a $536m TLB due 2024.

With a coupon of 11.25%, this is easily the highest coupon in Sabre’s debt stack, surpassing even the $775m 9.25% SSNs due 2025 that the company issued at the height of the pandemic.

In a report this week, Moody’s noted that bookings are still only at 50%-60% of their 2019 levels, suggesting room for improvement, and Sabre’s free cash flow is still negative and leverage is high.

“It’s very expensive financing for senior secured debt in today's market,” said Greenblath at American Century. “But if it keeps the lights on and preserves the equity, then you do what you have to do.”

Recently there’s been some pretty grim headcount news out of certain banks (Credit Suisse) and maybe-financial institutions (FTX and a bunch of other crypto firms). On the face of it, it doesn’t feel like a great time to be looking for a job in finance.

But if you’re good at persuading LPs to put cash to work in this environment, or reassuring them that the cash they’ve already entrusted you with is being looked after well, there are still plenty of hiring opportunities.

According to data compiled by recruitment company Jensen Partners (whose founder Sasha Jensen previously guested on our Cloud 9fin podcast to discuss diversity hiring) there’s plenty of demand for product specialists, especially in private equity and credit.

More job opportunities could also ramp up as firms like Carlyle, Blackstone and Apollo diversify expand their product platforms beyond buyouts, Jensen added. For more on this story and a rundown of primary market activity listen to this week’s episode of Cloud 9fin.

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Vista Credit Partners expands direct lending biz (Business Wire)

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US LevFin Wrap — Banks offload Nielsen LBO debt, Playa and Sabre highlight travel sector

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