In our latest strategy piece we concluded that, even in a stressed scenario, US and European high grade issuance could decline from peak levels yet overall activity should remain quite resilient. Well, that thesis could be tested in the coming months following a rash of (large) M&A announcements, including AB InBev's $106bn proposed acquisition of SABMiller, Dell's planned takeover of EMC, Sandisk's reported attempts to find a suitor and Analog Devices indicated to be in talks with Maxim. The phenomenon is straightforward, and one we have been touting for some time: firms are increasingly releveraging balance sheets as earnings languish. Wal-Mart is perhaps the latest example, issuing disappointing profit guidance as it seeks to spend significant sums on labor and the internet in an effort to reignite sales growth (and authorizing $20bn in share buybacks to boot).

What we find interesting is that most issuers and equity investors do not consider the prospect that debt markets could be reaching a point of full capacity – at least not in the near term. There are two root causes of this belief, in our view. First, neither has a strong appreciation of the divergences between debt and equity market universes. First, equity investors typically focus on large cap benchmarks (e.g., S&P 500) – of which most of the market capitalization lies in the top 100 firms – and generally see strong balance sheets with low net leverage, many of which are rated single and double A. However, that is not what credit investors view in their own universe. By definition, while equity indices weighted by market capitalization have been biased towards higher quality companies which have low debt and high cash balances, debt indices weighted by debt outstanding have been skewed towards those issuers raising more debt and generally levering up(Figure 1).

In the US, this first occurred in US leveraged loans (and to a lesser extent high yield) – driven primarily by financially savvy private equity owners; now it is manifesting itself in high grade as strategics lever up balance sheets to juice earnings in an environment where hiking dividends (further), buying back (more) stock, and spending on capex (particularly overseas) appears to have diminishing marginal returns. Second, this cohort perceives low rates as a key stabilizer for financing costs. As we argued last week, low Treasury yields are a key source of support for high grade bond yields. In recent months, even as IG credit spreads have widened, government bond yield declines have helped soften the overall impact on funding costs. For high yield yields, however, the major component is credit spreads, so low Treasury yields can only do so much.

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And releveraging and the underlying dynamics are not occurring in a US vacuum. In our opinion, European issuers and equity investors also do not fully appreciate the divergences in fundamentals between equity and debt markets. Our analysis shows median net leverage has been rising for European IG and HY companies for several years, while trends in median leverage for Eurostoxx 50 issuers have been more stable (until 2014, Figure 2).

Late last and earlier this year European credit investors are increasingly seeing US issuers selling Euro-denominated IG debt to fund M&A as well as viewing domestic issuers releveraging balance sheets (e.g., in technology, healthcare, consumer staples and telecom, Figure 3). And the general direction appears to be similar, whether we look at high grade or high yield (Figure 4).

Here lies the problem. The predestined outcome is essentially a standoff between equity and debt investors where the former will continue to pressure the latter until credit spreads widen enough to cause capital market access to contract, stemming the deal flow. In high yield, the likelihood of reaching a breaking point is greater – we have seen instances where this has already occurred and equity investors could be complacent in this respect. However, in high grade, we reiterate that the markets are somewhat bulletproof. But the stakes are rising with each record deal. Near term, credit investors in aggregate will likely continue to hold their noses and absorb the releveraging until it becomes very extreme, though extracting wider spreads in the process. Unlikely, yes, in the next quarter or two; however, even in high grade we cannot envision this type of punishment lasting for a couple more years.