Loans and High Yield

Last week’s heavy levfin supply hasn’t produced a pause for digestion, with five new high yield bonds on Monday joining two announced on Friday for execution this week, despite some recent supply trading down in secondary.

Cambodia’s Prasac Microfinance Institution has returned to the loan market for $200m, narrowing pricing by 35bp compared to its last transaction in 2020.

Duty-free operator Dufry joined the throng of issuers in the high yield primary markets this week with its first straight offering since the coronavirus pandemic hit. It increased the offering size from €850m to €1bn, as investors pinned their hopes on the vaccine-inspired recovery in the travel industry.

Pfleiderer and its owner, Strategic Value Partners, have minor changes during syndication to the deal docs in its dual-tranche sustainability-linked high yield bond, limiting the group’s flexibility to pay out sale proceeds from its Polish division as a dividend. But the company has succeeded in pushing pricing tight, with the fixed rate bonds set to land at 4.75% area and the floater at 475bp.

Cimpress has launched a cross-border term loan ‘B’, aiming to raise more first lien debt at tight levels to allow it to clean up its costly 12% second lien facility raised from Apollo last April.

GlobalCapital is conducting its annual poll to determine its Bond Awards 2021. The voting deadline has been extended until April 22, so we invite readers who have not voted yet to do so in the coming week.

Singapore’s agribusiness company Wilmar International has returned to the loan market for a borrowing of up to $1bn.

Finastra and Hubx, two UK fintechs, have partnered to create a new syndicated loan tool that the companies claim completely digitises the bookrunning process, as the loan market makes its slow trudge away from manual processes.

UniCredit swept away the Landesbanks in the Schuldschein market last quarter to claim pole position so far this year, with an arranging market share of nearly 20%.

Duty-free operator Dufry has joined the throng of issuers in the high yield primary markets with its first straight offering since the coronavirus pandemic hit. The new bond comes after extensive efforts to shore up the company’s capital, including the early conversion of a crisis era convert and talks with lenders for more covenant waivers.

The three global loan associations have launched the Social Loan Principles (SLP), as the ESG finance market expands beyond its environmental roots.

Lufthansa has issued a quirky Schuldschein this week, according to market sources, in that it was bought by the eight banks that arranged it, rather than being sold to investors.