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At 1600bps, the extra yield investors are demanding to take on US energy credit risk has never been higher. However, if a new report from Deloitte proves true, this is far from enough as they forecast roughly a third of oil producers are at high risk of slipping into bankruptcy this year as low commodity prices crimp their access to cash and ability to cut debt.

Record high US Energy credit risk…

The report, as Reuters reports, based on a review of more than 500 publicly traded oil and natural gas exploration and production companies across the globe, highlights the deep unease permeating the energy sector as crude prices sit near their lowest levels in more than a decade, eroding margins, forcing budget cuts and thousands of layoffs.

The roughly 175 companies at risk of bankruptcy have more than $150 billion in debt, with the slipping value of secondary stock offerings and asset sales further hindering their ability to generate cash, Deloitte said in the report, released Tuesday.

“These companies have kicked the can down the road as long as they can and now they’re in danger of kicking the bucket,” said William Snyder, head of corporate restructuring at Deloitte, in an interview. “It’s all about liquidity.”

Some oil producers are also choosing to liquidate hedges for a quick infusion of cash, a risky bet.

“2016 is the year of hard decisions, where it will all come to a head,” John England, vice chairman of Deloitte, said in an interview.

For now, however, there is a corner of the market that offers perhaps a smidge of saefty…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Horror Stories Emerge After A Cursory Look At Chinese Corporate Leverage

February 8, 2016

Horror Stories Emerge After A Cursory Look At Chinese Corporate Leverage

By now it is common knowledge that China has a major debt problem at the macro level, one which may be even bigger than expected because according to at least one analysis by Rabobank, China’s most recent debt has soared from the infamous McKinsey level of 282% as of mid 2014, to an unprecedented 346% currently.

Far less has been discussed about China’s corporate debt at the micro level. Back in October we were shocked when we looked at the inverse of corporate leverage, namely interest coverage within the heavily indebted commodity sector where we found that as of the end of 2014, just one half of Chinese companies could cover their annual interest expense, implying that according to a Macquarie analysis, some CNY2 trillion in debt was in danger of default.

This was over a year ago: since then both industry pricing and cash flow dynamics have deteriorated substantially and some estimate that more than three-quarters of leveraged commodity companies are dead zombies walking, suggesting a massive default wave is about to be unleashed.

And while we are keeping a close eye on this very troublesome development, last week the FT revealed something even more disturbing: Chinese corporate leverage, represented by the traditional debt/EBITDA ratio is, in some cases, absolutely ludicrous, especially among companies which in recent weeks have tried to mask their balance sheet devastation through global M&A activity, such as ChemChina’s recent record for a Chinese company $44 billion purchase of Syngenta, or Zoomlion’s $3.3 bid for US rival Terex last month.

In fact, as the otherwise demure FT notes, “so high are the debt levels at ChemChina and several other companies behind some of the country’s biggest overseas investments that financing for the deals would have been difficult or prohibitively expensive were it not for the backing of the Chinese state, analysts said.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

More Oil and Gas Bankruptcies Are Assured

February 1, 2016

More Oil and Gas Bankruptcies Are Assured

2015 was a terrible year for energy investors, but many investors and even corporate officers may be deluding themselves in believing that if they simply hold on, the good times will return.

The reality is that for many oil companies, the future is already written. In the last major oil bust of the 1980’s, a little more than a quarter of oil companies went out of business. The same thing is likely to happen again this time. And that means that investors and executives at oil companies showing the most signs of stress need to begin being realistic with themselves – some companies are already too far gone to save even if oil prices have finally bottomed.

In 2015, 42 oil companies filed for bankruptcy. This year will likely be even worse. In December of 2015, 11 percent of E&P companies defaulted on debts coming due versus just 0.5 percent in the same period a year earlier.

Again, 2016 will be much worse. The problem is that even if oil prices start to rebound at this point, oil companies are still holding large amounts of debt. That debt will come due, and when it does, companies will only have two choices – pay it off in full or roll the debt over. These are the typical two choices that firms face of course, but normally rolling bonds over is straightforward.

At this stage though, most oil companies are likely to find it nearly impossible to sell new bonds in order to retire the bonds coming due. With company’s holding far too little cash to pay off their existing obligations, the only choice will be a bankruptcy filing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Empire Has No Clothes

January 27, 2016

The Empire Has No Clothes

empire2 Hans Christian Andersen told the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes” as part of his Fairy Tales Told for Children collection. The tale is almost two hundred years old. Most know how a little boy was the first to announce that the emperor had no clothes. Andersen’s tale is being re-written today and should be entitled “The Empire Has No Clothes.” This story is one occurring around the world.

Governments are in disrepair and disrepute everywhere. They are increasingly viewed as exploitive, ineffective and catering to privilege. Public interest, the idealistic goal of government, never was real in the sense that it overrode the private needs and wants of officeholders. “Public servants” were never better stewards of public interest than private citizens pursuing their own self-interest. Indeed, once the returns to power increased, self-selection made most politicians inferior in morality and public interest than the typical citizen.

The discomfort and turn against government occurs not because any of its behavior is new. Government has always been dishonest and a scam. What changed over time is the magnitude of government and its burden on citizens. The pain of tolerating it has apparently reached that threshold where people are no longer willing to ignore it.

Governments around the world have become leviathans, meddling in the most minute and personal decisions of its citizens. Supporting government in its infancy required no taxation. Today the average citizen pays more than 40% of his production as tribute and support to the empire. Few believe they get much of value in return.

Even with such confiscatory theft, governments are spending themselves and their citizens into bankruptcy. Capital that entrepreneurs need to start and grow businesses is now consumed by government vote-buying schemes and stupidity. As a result, economic growth cannot occur, jobs are lost and the standard of living declines.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Oil Crash Of 2016 Has The Big Banks Running Scared

January 19, 2016

The Oil Crash Of 2016 Has The Big Banks Running Scared

Last time around it was subprime mortgages, but this time it is oil that is playing a starring role in a global financial crisis. Since the start of 2015, 42 North American oil companies have filed for bankruptcy, 130,000 good paying energy jobs have been lost in the United States, and at this point 50 percent of all energy junk bonds are “distressed” according to Standard & Poor’s. As you will see below, some of the big banks have a tremendous amount of loan exposure to the energy industry, and now they are bracing for big losses. And the longer the price of oil stays this low, the worse the carnage is going to get.

Today, the price of oil has been hovering around 29 dollars a barrel, and over the past 18 months the price of oil has fallen by more than 70 percent. This is something that has many U.S. consumers very excited. The average price of a gallon of gasoline nationally is just $1.89 at the moment, and on Monday it was selling for as low as 46 cents a gallon at one station in Michigan.

But this oil crash is nothing to cheer about as far as the big banks are concerned. During the boom years, those banks gave out billions upon billions of dollars in loans to fund exceedingly expensive drilling projects all over the world.

Now those firms are dropping like flies, and the big banks could potentially be facing absolutely catastrophic losses. The following examples come from CNN…

For instance, Wells Fargo (WFC) is sitting on more than $17 billion in loans to the oil and gas sector. The bank is setting aside $1.2 billion in reserves to cover losses because of the “continued deterioration within the energy sector.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Shale Defaults Begin Here: Banks Quietly Shrink These 25 Companies’ Credit Facilities

January 5, 2016

The Shale Defaults Begin Here: Banks Quietly Shrink These 25 Companies’ Credit Facilities

Everyone knows that at $35/barrel oil, virtually every US shale company is cash flow negative and is therefore burning through cash and other forms of liquidity such as bank revolvers and term loans, just as everyone knows that should oil remain at these prices, the US shale sector is facing an avalanche of defaults.

What is less known is who will be the next round of companies to default.

One good place to get an answer is to find which companies’ bankers are quietly tightening the liquidity noose (because they don’t want to be stuck holding worthless assets in bankruptcy or for whatever other reason), by quietly reducing the borrowing base on existing credit facilities.

It is these companies which find themselves inside this toxic feedback loop of declining liquidity, which forces them to utilize assets even faster, thus even further shrinking the borrowing base against which their banks have lent them money, that will be at the forefront of the epic bankruptcy wave that is waiting to be unleashed across the US, leading to tens of billions of defaults junk bonds over the next 12-18 months.

So, without further ado here are 25 deeply distressed companies, whose banks we found have quietly shrunk the borrowing base of their credit facilities anywhere from 6% in the case of Black Ridge Oil and Gas to a whopping 51% for soon to be insolvent New Source Energy Partners.

Source: Bloomberg

Even Bankruptcy Can’t Slow US Oil Production Much, it Seems

January 4, 2016

Even Bankruptcy Can’t Slow US Oil Production Much, it Seems

The resilience has extended the timeline in this oil bust.

Is it over yet? 2015 will certainly go down as the worst year for energy stocks since 2008 – that is unless 2016 beats it for misery. Looking at certain sub-sectors, like off-shore drilling, 2016 could unbelievably make 2015 look tame.

We always knew that the bust cycle in oil prices was going to bring a lot of bad times for energy stocks – but no one imagined such carnage, even among the strongest names.

I have been focusing on what I have called ‘the survivors’ and trying to find value in the shares of names like EOG Resources (EOG), Cimarex (XEC) and Hess (HES). With off-shore drillers, I’ve imagined even more awful times ahead, but took a speculative shot with Seadrill (SDRL), looking down the road two years at the inevitable rebound in deepwater drilling.

But the resilience of many of the unconventional drillers has unexpectedly extended the timeline in this oil bust cycle, catching me by surprise. We’re operating inside this insane Catch-22: Oil prices can’t get constructive until the U.S. and other non-OPEC producers start to trim their outputs, yet oil companies continue to use efficiency gains and top line spending cuts to stay in the game and maintain production. Oil prices stay low, and drift lower. 2016 will not be happy, at least for the first several quarters.

It gets worse: Oil companies have pushed their debt deftly down the curve, with only a tiny number of high-yielding issues coming due and requiring refinancing this coming year, promising an even more extended period of financial life support.

We’ve seen the wild outcome of a few of the ‘early’ bankruptcies in U.S. independents: Both Quicksilver Resources and Magnum Hunter have seen their common shares go to zero and been forced to declare Chapter 11, but have also been ordered to continue operations pending break-up or other restructuring.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Doom and Gloom for North American Oil Producers

December 30, 2015

Doom and Gloom for North American Oil Producers

Lower Oil Prices

To the dismay of U.S. shale producers, oil prices continue their long slow slide into the abyss. Perhaps the current price of $35 per barrel – an 11 year low – is the final destination. More than likely, however, it’s a brief reprieve before the next descent.

excess natural gas burns southeast of Baghdad Photo credit: Mohammed Ameen / Reuters

Oil exporters, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, have maintained high production rates. Their goal is to bankrupt U.S. shale companies and preserve market share. At the same time, oil demand is tapering as the global economy cools.

1-World3 Global crude oil and condensate (c+c) production as of June 2015. In record high territory.

The combination of high production and declining demand has resulted in excess supply, and lower prices. The trend of lower prices won’t change until either demand increases or production decreases. At the moment, it doesn’t appear that either of these factors will change any time soon.

So how low can oil prices go? If you recall, in the late-1990s, oil prices dropped below $20 per barrel. Goldman Sachs thinks we’ll see $20 per barrel oil again.

Obviously, oil prices can’t go to zero. However, this offers little consolation for the many oil companies that borrowed gobs of money from Wall Street to leverage development of fracked wells that require $60 per barrel oil to pencil out.

2-Russia3 Contrary to widespread expectations, Russian production has proved more than resilient in the face of low prices. The decline in the ruble and high export taxes on oil (which are based on threshold prices) have left Russian producers in a competitive situation.

Declining Hedges

So while it isn’t possible for oil prices to go to zero. It is possible for the stock prices of oil companies to go to zero. In fact, over the next 12 months there could be a rash of bankruptcy’s that results in delisted, worthless shares.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Puerto Rico’s Debt Trap

December 29, 2015

Puerto Rico’s Debt Trap

WASHINGTON, DC – The Caribbean island of Puerto Rico – the largest United States “territory” – is broke, and a human calamity is unfolding there. Unless a constructive course of political action is found in 2016, Puerto Rican migration to the 50 states will rival the scale of the 1930s Dust Bowl exodus from Oklahoma, Arkansas, and other climate-devastated states.

With public debt service (principal plus interest) projected to reach nearly 40% of government revenue in 2016, Puerto Rico needs a new set of economic policies. But austerity will not work; this must be an investment-led recovery, with official measures oriented toward boosting growth by reducing the cost of doing business.

The question is whether Puerto Rico will have that option. Much of its $73 billion debt has been issued by government corporations. But, though federal law allows such municipal debt to be restructured under Chapter 9 of the bankruptcy code in all 50 states, this does not apply to US territories like Puerto Rico. As a result, a protracted series of confusing legal battles and selective defaults looms. The cost of essential infrastructure services – electricity, water, sewers, and transportation – will go up while quality declines.

One response has been to demand further belt-tightening, for example, in the form of wage reductions and healthcare cuts. But residents of Puerto Rico are also US citizens and they vote with their feet – the population has fallen from 3.9 million to 3.5 million in recent years as talented and energetic people have moved to Florida, Texas, and other parts of the mainland.

The more creditors insist on lower living standards and higher taxes, the more the tax base will simply leave the island – causing bondholders’ losses to rise. Disorganized defaults by public corporations will make it hard for any part of the private credit system to function.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bank Counterparty Risk Surges To 4-Year High

December 21, 2015

Bank Counterparty Risk Surges To 4-Year High

The TED Spread is the difference between the interest rates on interbank loans and on short-term U.S. government debt and as such offers a proxy for how banks themselves perceive the relative creditworthiness of the financial system. The last time TED spread was surging to this level was late 2011, as Europe’s crises was exploding.

Which makes one wonder whether The Fed rate hike was – as we detailed here – an implicit bailout for foreign (read European) banks?

But the pace of increase is extremely worrisome historically

The Fed just hiked into this massive two-week surge in TED spreads; as opposed cutting by 75 bps in 2008 and unleashing more QE at Jackson Hole in 2011! That hike seems akin to what happened in Sep-08 when Lehman went Bankrupt.

(h/t Brendan Ferro)

US financials credit risk continues to push wider (with stocks remaining cognitively disssonant for now).

With the Fed’s own National Activity Index tumbling, its own Financial Stress Index soaring, and now major concerns about the US financial system’s stability looming, one has to ask, how long before Janet unleashes the next QE?

Renewable Energy Bankruptcy Threatens Spanish Banks

December 7, 2015

Renewable Energy Bankruptcy Threatens Spanish Banks

In another sign of the turbulent times for the renewable energy sector, Spain’s Abengoa has declared bankruptcy. The bankruptcy is notable for several reasons. First, it suggests how difficult the transition from conventional energy firms to solvent and stable renewable energy companies will be. Second, it shows how connected the economy is and how turbulence in the energy sector could easily spread to other sectors of the economy creating a broader economic slowdown at any point going forward.

Abengoa’s problems today stem from overly aggressive decisions made during the years of heavy expansion that renewable power saw in Spain. Abengoa’s bankruptcy is significant given the size of the company; the firm employs 24,000 people and is involved in a range of renewables businesses from biomass conversion to seawater desalinization. U.S. investment bank Citi led a secondary shares offering earlier this year which looks like a major embarrassment for the firm as this point. While Abengoa’s shares have had a tough year thus far, investors still appeared to be caught by surprise to some extent by the bankruptcy filing as its Spanish shares plunged by more than half after the filing.

Abengoa’s financing has been something of a black box according to analysts and that certainly has led to greater confusion among investors. Still, the firm is not alone in that approach to its capital structure as a number of other companies in the renewable sector follow the same pattern. Broadly speaking Abengoa’s bankruptcy suggests the renewables space is still more dependent on subsidies than many firms would like to admit. It’s unclear what it will take to get many firms operating on their own in a stable and solvent fashion. Renewables in general tend to require large amounts of upfront investment and hence often require significant amounts of debt investment. The problem is that debt becomes an anchor anytime a subsector becomes oversupplied with output or when demand falls due to recessions or secular changes in energy consumption.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Here’s What Happens When Central Banks Go Broke

October 24, 2015

Here’s What Happens When Central Banks Go Broke

On Friday, in “Is Mario Draghi About To Go Full-Kuroda? RBS Says ECB Could Buy Stocks,” we took a closer look at what the ECB’s options are when it comes to implementing further easing measures come December.

As a reminder, Mario Draghi telegraphed either another depo rate cut, an expansion of PSPP, or both at Thursday’s ECB presser and now the market is keen to analyze the situation and determine not only what Goldman’s man in Europe is most likely to announce, but what the implications of his announcement are likely to be.

To be sure, further cuts to the depo rate will simply trigger a chain reaction whereby the Riksbank and the SNB will be forced to respond in kind, lest they should lose ground in the global currency war on the way to seeing their inflation targets threatened. This raises the spectre that NIRP may soon come to household deposits, something which, despite the proliferation of negative rates, hasn’t yet occurred.

As for the expansion of PSPP, we looked at a variety of options courtesy of RBS’ Alberto Gallo who notes that Draghi could end up buying corporate bonds, munis, equities, and even individual bank loans before it’s over. Here’s how we summed it up yesterday:

In the end, all that will happen is the EMU’s neighbors will be forced further into NIRP and the ECB will end up with a nightmarish balance sheet full of stocks, corporate credit, munis, and God only knows what kind of loans purchased from banks, and all of which will have been bought at or near the top. That sets up the possibility that central banks could end up being forced to operate from a negative equity position. In other words: it sets up the possibility that they’ll technically go broke.

There’s been no shortage of coverage over the past several years regarding the idea that central banks can effectively go bankrupt.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Will Illinois Be the First State to Go Bankrupt?

October 20, 2015

Will Illinois Be the First State to Go Bankrupt?

The state of Illinois is in real trouble. The state employees have been bleeding the state dry and are demanding that they raise taxes so they can get theirs. This is the poster state for government employees expropriating private assets. Illinois must pay $560 million in November and they have said they will have to delay the payment to its pension funds. They will also delay payments due in December. We are on the verge of watching state bankruptcy. Once Illinois goes, others will follow to escape pension payments to former state employees.

Is The Oil And Gas Fire Sale About To Start?

October 16, 2015

Is The Oil And Gas Fire Sale About To Start?

Much has been written about the mounting pile of debt for U.S. oil companies (not to mention the well-known Brazilian oil giant).

Not that long ago, many oil and gas companies secured at least a part of their revenue by hedging contracts. Bloomberg already reported in June that many of these companies saw their artificial safety nets vanishing as oil prices failed to recover. One month later, we heard such morale boosting terms as ‘frack now, pay later,’ which were merely a bold move by struggling oil services companies to encourage cash strapped oil and gas companies to continue operations.

Simultaneously, we witnessed the bankruptcies of companies such as Samson Resources, Hercules Offshore and Sabine Oil & Gas Corp. These bankruptcies put the industry on notice. The cash flow situation for the entire oil and gas sector looks outright grim. Credit rating agency Moody’s expects a sector wide negative cash flow of $80 billion and is expecting spending cuts to continue next year. See figure 1 below for an overview of industry income and spending.

Image source: Reuters

(Click to enlarge)

Summing it up, debt, negative cash flows and the outlook for oil prices have led weak companies with balance sheets to a divest in a big way.

Although we have witnessed a couple of noteworthy acquisitions in the last months, which put 2015 in the books as a year with high volume takeovers, we cannot yet speak about an absolute M&A boom.

One of the most important reasons holding back takeovers of entire companies is the oil price volatility we have seen in the last few weeks. Financially stronger oil and gas companies seem to have postponed takeover plans and are now focusing on the acquisition of promising land holdings. Nonetheless, it seems that both buyers and sellers are preparing themselves for what could turn out to be a fire sale.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Australia’s Mega LNG Projects are in Serious Trouble

September 22, 2015

Australia’s Mega LNG Projects are in Serious Trouble

In the US, natural gas is dirt cheap. The price peaked in 2008 and has since collapsed. It remains below the cost of production, even today. Two natural gas drillers have recently buckled and declared bankruptcy.

In the international markets, natural gas is traded as Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG). There was a time, after Japan shut down its nuclear power plants in the wake of Fukushima, when prices, particularly for delivery in Japan and Korea, soared. And during this environment, a number of countries invested heavily into building LNG export terminals that convert natural gas into LNG.

In the US, this has been the story of Cheniere Energy, a company that has barely any sales. It’s mostly famous for always losing a lot of money and then raising even more money. It’s stock has soared from less than $2 a share in 2009 to over $80 a share late last year and earlier this year, giving it a ludicrous market capitalization of nearly $20 billion. And it has a breath-taking $18 billion in debt. But the dream is deflating, and it closed at $52.40 today.

It’s deflating because it’s a dream, and dreams always deflate sooner or later. And because prices in the rest of the world have collapsed as well.

And because in the US, current low prices are sending producers into bankruptcy. This works for a while, until it doesn’t. At some point – when the money runs out – they stop drilling. And they can’t restart until prices rise significantly. Rising gas prices in the US and dropping LNG prices in the international market crimps any possibilities for Cheniere’s math to work out.

Australia is in the same boat, but to an extent that dwarves US efforts. Here’s Mark Hansen in Australia to shed light on just how ugly the LNG debacle is getting down under.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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