The monthly total of $5.9 billion in new collateralized loan obligation issuance in August made slight gains over July’s output, but year-to-date issuance remains sharply off 2015’s pace.
The 13 new deals in August, which included Carlyle Global Management’s third U.S. deal of the year and GSO Blackstone’s first, brought the total number of deals through Aug. 31 to 87 transactions totaling $37.8 billion in issuance, according to monthly figures from Thomson Reuters LPC.
That total is down over 51% from a volume of $73.7 billion (from 139 deals) in the same period a year ago. The final tally for 2015 was $98.5 billion through 190 deals, which was itself a 25.4% drop from the record-setting $123.6 billion CLO market in 2014.
Still, August was the third busiest month in terms of new issuance for CLOs in 2016, as investors remain active despite the market challenges of a dearth of new issuance and a slowing pipeline of leveraged loan supply. Loan volumes are off 19% year-over-year at $466 billion.
(Loans in the industry sectors of construction, transportation, hotel & gaming and restaurants continue to display robust investor demand, with bid prices at more than 99 cents on the dollar for each, according to LPC).
Europe saw only one deal price in August (Chenavari Credit Partners’ €362.8 million Toro European CLO 2016-2, through Citigroup), but CLO issuance remains slightly ahead of the 2015’s pace with €10.1 billion worth of deals compared to €9.8 billion last year.
The busiest CLO managers of the year in the U.S. have been Prudential Investment Management, which heads the 2016 league tables with three deals totaling $1.67 billion, and Carlyle Investment Management which also pieced together a trio of deals tallied at $1.4 billion.
According to LPC, 62 managers have issued one or more deals nearly three quarters into 2016.
