Private equity-sponsored initial public offerings are showing signs of slowing after accounting for more than 40 percent of US IPOs in 2006. Some say the lull is temporary, since selling shares to the public is one avenue still open to private equity firms, even as turmoil in credit markets makes it more difficult to sell portfolio companies onto other private equity firms, as used to happen frequently.
Private equity firms buy companies by borrowing most of the money. That is harder to do now with the credit crunch severely curtailing the willingness of banks to lend for big deals.
"Most of the focus will be in taking the companies public," said Goldman Sachs managing director Richard Friedman, speaking at a Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst conference last week. "That's going to become the overriding market for exits." But others say the deals are going to be harder to sell to investors wary about the high-debt load carried by some of these companies.
"It is a tighter lending market than it was earlier in the year," said Francis Gaskins, president of IPO research firm IPOdesktop.com. That is making IPO investors more wary about private-equity sponsored deals, he added. "People are not only looking at the debt they are paying down, but other debt on the balance sheet. That debt will have to be refinanced at some point.
"Will there be a problem refinancing existing debt?," that is the question investors are asking, said Gaskins. "That's why private equity-backed IPOs are not as plentiful." So far this year, the private equity sector has generated $14.5 billion through public spin-offs of portfolio companies, or about one-third of the total $43.5 billion raised by IPOs on US stock exchanges, according to preliminary data released this week by data tracker Dealogic.
The slower pace than last year's 40 percent appears to have set in, at least for the short-term, based on the number of deals in the US IPO pipeline. Regulatory filings have been made for 54 private equity-sponsored deals, according to Dealogic, estimated to raise roughly $10.8 billion. That is about 15 percent less than the firms were looking to raise at this time last year.
But the IPO market is far from being a one-size-fits-all answer for the private equity sector. "Not all businesses are well suited to being public companies," said Brooke Coburn, managing director and co-head of Carlyle Group's Carlyle Venture Partners, speaking earlier this month on a panel discussion hosted by Ernst & Young.
Several companies due to launch initial public offerings in the coming weeks will test the market's appetite for private-equity sponsored deals, highlighted by Affinion Group Holdings' filing to raise up to $550 million in an IPO expected in the next two weeks. The offering is being sponsored by private equity giant Apollo Management LP, which bought Affinion two years ago for about $1.8 billion.
Affinion, which provides direct marketing and customer loyalty programs for large corporations such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Staples, will use proceeds from the offering to pay down debt. It is also expected to pay a $10 million early termination fee to Apollo under a 12-year consulting and advisory agreement.
As of June 30, 2007 the Norwalk, Connecticut-based company had $1.65 billion in long-term debt, according to its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Following the offering, Apollo will own about 63 percent of the company.
Comments
Comments are closed.