, 14 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
1/ Think about this comment from Morgan Stanley's credit person for one second. The second largest underwriter of high yield debt has no idea about the most pressing credit issue in a prominent high yield name.
2/ This is what happens when a HY issue really doesn't trade and has been put away with two buyers. This MS credit guy is basically telling you he hasn't looked at Tesla bonds since the launch. I find this shockingly unprofessional but also not surprising. Let's help him.
3/ First, I spent half of my 30+ year career in HY and workout. The other half in equity research Buyside and sellside in both asset classes. Equity analysts think bondholders are more plugged in and bondholders think equity analysts know more. It's kind of funny.
4/ Who is right? IMO, companies care more about their stock price than bonds. Bonds generally get put away and there are many one-off bond issues trading (like Tesla) and if it's a one-and-done, it's hard to excuse companies for literally not caring.
5/ But that's no excuse for a dedicated HY desk. Tesla being blocked by the regulators is perhaps the most widely covered aspect of this story, and Tesla, given how frequently CNBC discusses it, is certainly among the most widely discussed names on Wall Street period.
6/ There are 5 or 6 companies in the entire S&P index with a credit rating equal to Tesla's (and Tesla isn't in the S&P). The vast majority of names are BB or higher, as you would expect. The S&P is a quality index, and that is reflected all the way through the cap structure.
7/ When I started in HY in the 80's, Milken was 90% of the market, public HY hadn't really developed yet, and the HY market was almost all privates and almost exclusively the domain of insurance companies and S&L's.
8/ Your typical HY issuer was a borderline basket case, with barely 1.5x interest coverage, probably levered 8x EBITDA. Small cap, stressed industrial credits struggling to make it through the next cycle. When I started, we were buying HY at 2100 over treasuries. 2100.
9/ Tesla today looks just like one of those Milken-era HY industrials. I saw Goldman estimating $500mm in EBITDA. Down from $3.0bn just a year ago. I don't believe one penny of that EBITDA is real. We will all see that soon enough.
10/ Tesla trades like the garbage B- credit it is. Other comps trading at similar spreads include such HY luminaries as Warrior Met Coal, Community Health, Quad Graphics, Donnelley Financial, National Cinemedia.
11/ These are $100mm-$400mm mkt caps. Look at these equity charts. Not exactly in demand names. Tired old stories running out the clock to the next restructuring. Each of these pigs has better credit metrics than Tesla.
12/ The significance of this shockingly ignorant MS credit comment is for the rest of you to know to discount what you hear from big shops. Clearly big shops can just be mailing it in. Clearly they can have an ignorant and uninformed view.
13/ Tesla's HY barely registers in the public consciousness because the bonds don't trade. No one cares. Even the two largest holders don't care because they are stuck owning this and they own it in a small enough size it can never hurt them even if it goes to zero.
The equity community in Tesla hasn't distinguished itself either. My point is simply this: never before have I seen such an information deficit in the community of people that ought to know better and don't. This is one name where you can ignore the Street without risk.
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