Carlyle Investment Management is issuing a €400 million European collateralized loan obligation at some of the tightest spreads of the year.
Carlyle Euro CLO 2017-3 is at least the second to price at a spread of less than of 80 basis points above Libor this month. It's being issued under the firm's new 2017 shelf managed by Carlyle affiliate CELF Advisors, according to a report issued Tuesday by Moody’s Investors Service.
Moody’s assigned provisional ratings to the deal, including a €234 Class A-1 super-senior tranche that pays 75 basis points over three-month Euribor.
Earlier this month, Aqueduct European CLO 2-2017 priced at 78 basis points above three-month (-0.392% since Sept. 1) and six-month Euribor (tightening to -0.272% from -0.276% at the beginning of the month), according to a Nov. 1 Moody’s presale report.
All told, there have been €4.8 billion in European CLOs in November, according to JPMorgan.
Carlyle is also taking advantage of attractive funding stateside to refinance its seventh U.S. CLO of the year. The manager launched a recapitalization of its Global Market Strategies CLO 2013-2. In addition to replacing the $461.6 million of original notes, it issued additional notes, booting the deal’s overall size to $564 million.
The replacement AAA notes are sized at $342.5 million, with a coupon of Libor plus 89 basis points.
The reinvestment and non-call periods as well as the maturity date are each being extended 3.75 years. The weighted average spread will be 3.58%, and the deal will have a higher-than-average leverage ratio of 10.12x, compared with an average of 8.7x for rated broadly syndicated CLOs issued over the past three months, according to S&P.
Carlyle Investment Management manages 11 CLOs with $5.99 billion under management. The deal is expected to close Dec. 7.
Also launching a refi this week is Guggenheim Partners Investment Management. Unlike Carlyle’s factory-like approach to overhauling deals this year, Guggenheim is only marketing its first refinancing of the year, replacing the notes on its $990.6 million 5180-2 CLO originally launched in 2015.
The 5180-2 CLO replacement notes include a $603.6 million triple-A tranche, according to Moody’s. Pricing information was unavailable, according to Thomson Reuters LPC.
U.S. refinancings/resets have reached $7.9 billion this month, according to JPMorgan. That adds to the $142.1 billion refinanced or reset in the first 10 months of the year.
In new deal activity, GSO/Blackstone is launching its third CLO of 2017 with Long Point Park CLO, a $610.8 million transaction with a coupon of Libor plus 107 basis points for the $367.5 million AAA paper stack.
GSO/Blackstone has wide latitude to invest in covenant-lite loans; the cap is 90% of the collateral pool. This will come in handy. Eight-eight percent of leveraged loans issued in the third quarter had imposed limited restrictions on borrowers such as taking out additional debt, or requirements to maintenance of certain financial ratios, according to XtractResearch).
S&P Global Ratings is only assigning ratings to the senior tranches in the deal.
Long Point will be the 11th U.S. CLO managed by GSO/Blackstone, which had $5.6 billion in CLO assets under management as of August.
