Would I Invest in Astrea IV 4.35% Bonds?

Recently, Temasek launched a Private Equity (PE) bond for retail investors known as Astrea IV 4.35% bond. It is the first PE bond open to retail investors. Would I invest my money in this bond?

First of all, let us understand what this bond is all about. This bond is issued by Astrea IV Pte Ltd, an indirect wholly owned subsidiary of Temasek, to hold a portfolio of PE investments. The investments are managed by 27 General Partners in 36 PE funds and invested in 596 companies. 86.1% of these funds are invested in buyouts, with 12.3% in growth equity and 1.6% in private debt. 

Buyout funds are funds that privatise publicly listed companies, cut the excesses in the companies and streamline their operations to make them more efficient, and seek to exit the companies by selling them or listing them again. An example is Amtek Engineering, which was delisted from SGX in 2007 after being bought out by a PE fund, and was relisted as Interplex Holdings in 2010. And the story did not end there. Interplex Holdings itself was delisted in 2016 after being bought out by another PE fund.

The issuer, Astrea IV, has 3 classes of bonds, as follow:

• Class A-1 - SGD242M 4.35% senior bonds that are open to retail investors and which are the subject of this post.
• Class A-2 - USD210M senior bonds open only to Institutional and/or Accredited Investors. Class A-2 bonds have the same seniority as Class A-1 bonds.
• Class B - USD110M bonds junior bonds open only to Institutional and/or Accredited Investors. 

The structure of the bonds is such that Class A bonds have priority to interest payments and bond redemption. In addition, it can borrow money from banks to make interest payments in the event that there are insufficient cashflows to do so. Moreover, its Loan-to-Value (LTV) ratio is capped at 50% of the portfolio value. If this threshold is crossed, it will have to cut debt levels. Furthermore, Class A bonds are senior to Class B bonds and shareholder equity. For Class A bonds to lose money, the portfolio that Astrea IV invests in must lose at least 64.4% of its value. So, it is quite safe, isn't it? 

First of all, you need to recognise that Astrea IV, the company that you are investing into by buying the retail bond, is essentially a fund of funds. Although its LTV is capped at 50%, this is only at the Astrea IV level. The funds that Astrea IV invests into could have their own borrowings and these are not counted in the 50% LTV cap. After accounting for these borrowings at the lower levels (i.e. look-through basis), the leverage could be much higher. As a hypothetical example, Company A could have shareholder equity of $50M and bonds of $50M. Using this $100M, Company A invests into Company B. Company B borrows another $100M. Company B invests the $200M into a property. How much of the investment in the property is funded by equity and borrowings? The answer is $50M in equity and $150M in borrowings. Thus, even though the LTV at Company A's level is only 50%, on a look-through basis, the LTV is 75%! Does LTV on a look-through basis matter? For Company A's equity to be wiped out completely and its bonds to start losing money, the property's value only need to fall by 25% ($50M equity out of $200M asset value). So, LTV on a look-through basis does matter!

Secondly, most of the money are invested in buyout funds. Buyouts are usually highly leveraged operations. In the process of buying out companies, they take on large debts and usually pay a premium to acquire a 100% stake in the companies. After successfully acquiring the companies (which are usually cashflow-rich companies), they extract most of the cash from the companies to pay down their own debts. They also streamline the operations of the companies and load them with debts, such that the companies become more conscious about cutting costs and direct most of their cashflows to paring down the debts loaded onto them. Thus, the high returns of buyout funds are partly due to making the companies more efficient and partly due to the leverage employed. As an example, when 3G Capital teamed up with Berkshire Hathaway to buy Heinz for USD23.3B in 2013, they only forked out USD4.4B in capital each. The remaining was borrowed. (Note: Berkshire Hathaway also bought USD8B of preferred stocks paying 9% interest. I will leave it to readers to decide whether to classify this USD8B as equity or debt.)

Thus, in conclusion, Astrea IV is essentially a fund of leveraged buyout funds. I will not be investing in these bonds, even if its 4.35% coupon looks attractive.

See related blog posts:

• Are Private Equity Bonds Better Than Corporate Bonds?
• Understanding the Safeguards of Astrea IV 4.35% Bonds
• Astrea V 3.85% Bonds – Understanding What You Are Buying Into