U.S. middle market loan pipeline reaches a new height The latest U.S. middle market pipeline figure hit US$6.1bn marking the highest level it has reached since Thomson Reuters LPC started tracking mid-market pipeline stats last year. Lenders in the middle market have said they have kept busy and the pipeline number backs this up. Helping…

Unitranche volume dropped meaningfully in 1Q18 Thomson Reuters LPC’s newest unitranche league table provides insight into a very private, opaque market. After peaking at a robust $8.2B in 4Q17, unitranche volume fell off a dramatic 63% in 1Q18. What drove the fall off? Sponsors typically gravitate to the unitranche for ease of execution in M&A…

U.S. LBO issuance shows more bark than bite in 1Q18 There was a lot of noise around LBO activity last quarter, but in the end 1Q18 U.S. LBO loan issuance totals finished at a modest US$19bn, 17% behind 4Q17’s level of US$22.9bn and 24% behind 1Q17’s US$25.2bn. The good news is that a lot of…

Middle market loan issuance falls off in 1Q18 to US$32.2bn After heating up in 4Q17 to US$44.1bn, middle market lending flopped in 1Q18. Syndicated middle market issuance of US$32.2bn fell 27% and 16% from 4Q17 and 1Q17 levels, respectively. A light flow of new money activity was felt in both the sponsored and non-sponsored market…

1Q18 Global loan volume down 15% y-o-y; Decline felt across regions 1Q18 global loan volume tumbled 15% year over year to log less than US$924bn during the first three months of the year. No region was spared a more limited pipeline of deals. The Americas observed an 11% drop in regional issuance with less than…

Primary leveraged yields widen across the board due to rising Libor rate The increase in Libor rates has boosted yields on institutional term loans this quarter. The average yield, assuming a three-year term to repayment is at 5.42% so far in 1Q18; up from 4Q17’s 5.02%. Driving up the yields is the increase in the…

Second lien issuance reaches $6.8B so far in 1Q18 Syndicated and privately placed second lien loan volume has reached US$6.8bn so far in 1Q18, which is not too far behind 4Q17’s volume of US$8.6bn. Issuers continue to rely on second lien facilities to maximize their leverage as 61% of the second liens tranches have been…

Institutional term loans spreads are back to 2007 levels Average spreads on first-lien institutional term loans have dropped to their lowest level since 4Q07. The drop has been across the board. The average spread for large corporate issuers is 320bp so far in 1Q18; this is 10bp below their 4Q17 levels and only 8bp above…

U.S. large corporate LBOs are averaging bigger, more expensive deals so far in 2018 Register now for LPC’s 6th Annual Middle Market Loans Conference – April 25, 2018 at the NY Marriott Marquis! While it is still early in 2018, average purchase price and purchase price multiples on large corporate LBO deals have increased so far…

LBO leverage levels continue to loosen Debt to EBITDA levels on LBO deals spanning the entire market (including broadly syndicated and institutional middle market loans) are currently averaging 6.3 times when looking on a rolling last four quarter basis. This would make it the highest post-crisis average and second only to 4Q07’s average of 6.5…