💰Private Equity Own Yo Sh*t (Short Health. And Care)💰

Forget Toys R Us. Private Equity Now Owns Your Eyes and Teeth

It has been over a month since media reports that Bernie Sanders and certain other Congressman questioned KKR about its role in the demise of Toys R Us (and the loss of 30k jobs). At the time, in “💥KKR Effectively Tells Bernie Sanders to Pound Sand💥,” we argued that the uproar was pretty ridiculous — even if we do hope that, in the end, we are wrong and that there’s some resolution for all of those folks who relied upon promises of severance payments. Remember: KKR declared that it is back-channeling with interested parties to come to some sort of resolution that will assuage people’s hurt feelings (and pocketbooks). Since then: we’ve heard nothing but crickets.

This shouldn’t surprise anyone. What might, however, is the degree to which private equity money is in so many different places with such a large potential societal impact. It extends beyond just retail.

Last week Josh Brown of Ritholtz Wealth Management posted a blog post entitled, “If You’re a Seller, Sell Now. If you’re a Buyer, Wait.” Here are some choice bits (though we recommend you read the whole thing):

I’ve never seen a seller’s market quite like the one we’re in now for privately held companies. In almost any industry, especially if it’s white collar, professional services and has a recurring revenue stream. There are thirty buyers for every business and they’re paying record-breaking multiples. There are opportunities to sell and stay on to manage, or sell to cash out (and bro down). There are rollups rolling up all the things that can be rolled up.

In my own industry, private equity firms have come in to both make acquisitions as well as to back existing strategic acquirers. This isn’t brand new, but the pace is furious and the deal size is going up. I’m hearing and seeing similar things happening with medical practices and accounting firms and insurance agencies.

Anything that can be harvested for its cash flows and turned into a bond is getting bought. The competition for these “assets” is incredible, by all accounts I’ve heard. Money is no object.

Here’s why – low interest rates (yes they’re still low) for a decade now have pushed huge pools of capital further out onto the risk curve. They’ve also made companies that rely upon borrowing look way more profitable than they’d ordinarily be.

This can go on for awhile but not forever. And when the music stops, a lot of these rolled-up private equity creations will not end up being particularly sexy. Whether or not the pain will be greater for private vs public companies in the next recession remains to be seen.

The Institutional Investor outright calls a bubble in its recent piece, “Everything About Private Equity Reeks of Bubble. Party On!” They note:

The private equity capital-raising bonanza has at least one clear implication: inflated prices.

Buyout multiples last year climbed to a record 10.2 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. This year they remained elevated at an average of 9.5 times ebitda through May, a level surpassing the 2007 peak of the precrisis buyout boom.

When you’re buying assets at inflated prices/values and levering them up to fund the purchase, what could possibly go wrong?

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What really caught our eye is Brown’s statement about medical practices. Ownership there can be direct via outright purchases. Or they can be indirect, through loans. Which, in a rising rate environment, may ultimately turn sour.

Consider for a moment the recent news that private equity is taking over from and competing with banks in the direct lending business. KKR, Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, Apollo Global Management LLC and Ares Management LP are all over the space, raising billions of dollars, the latter recently closing a new $10 billion fund in Q2. They’re looking at real estate, infrastructure, insurance, healthcare and hedge funds. Per The Wall Street Journal:

Direct loans are typically floating-rate, meaning they earn more in a rising-rate environment. But borrowers accustomed to low rates may be unprepared for a jump in interest costs on what’s often a big pile of debt. That risk, combined with increasingly lenient terms and the relative inexperience of some direct lenders, could become a bigger issue in a downturn.

Regulators like that banks are wary of lending to companies that don’t meet strict criteria. But they are concerned about what’s happening outside their dominion. Joseph Otting, U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, said earlier this year: “A lot of that risk didn’t go away, it was just displaced outside of the banking industry.”

What happens when the portfolio companies struggle and these loans sour? The private equity fund (or hedge fund, as the case may be) may end up becoming the business’ owner. Take Elements Behavioral Health, for instance. It is the US’s largest independent provider of drug and alcohol addiction treatment. In late July, the bankruptcy court for the District of Delaware approved the sale of it the centers to Project Build Behavioral Health, LLC, which is a investment vehicle established by, among others, prepetition lender BlueMountain Capital Management. In other words, the next time Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan need rehab, they’ll be paying a hedge fund.

The hedge fund ownership of healthcare treatment centers thing doesn’t appear to have worked out so well in Santa Clara County.

These aren’t one-offs.

Apollo Global Management LLC ($APO) is hoping to buy LifePoint Health Inc. ($LPNT), a hospital operator in approximately 22 states, in a $5.6 billion deal. Per Reuters:

Apollo’s deal - its biggest this year - is the latest in a recent surge of public investments by U.S. private equity, the highest since the 2007-08 global financial crisis.

With a record $1 trillion in cash at their disposal, top private equity names have turned to healthcare. Just last month, KKR and Veritas Capital each snapped up publicly-listed healthcare firms in multi-billion dollar deals.

Indeed, hospital operators are alluring to investors, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Joseph France said. Because their operations are largely U.S.-based, hospital firms benefit more from lower tax rates than the average U.S. company, and are also more insulated from global trade uncertainties, France said.

Your next hospital visit may be powered by private equity.

How about dentistry? Well, in July, Bloomberg reported KKR & Co’s purchase of Heartland Dental in that “Private Equity is Pouring Money Into a Dental Empire.” It observed:

In April, the private equity powerhouse bought a 58 percent stake that valued Heartland at a rich $2.8 billion, the latest in a series of acquisitions in the industry. Other Wall Street investment firms -- from Leonard Green & Partners to Ares Management -- are also drilling into dentistry to see if they can create their own mega chains.

Here’s a choice quote for you:

"It feels a bit like the gold rush," said Stephen Thorne, chief executive officer of Pacific Dental Services. "Some of these private equity companies think the business is easier than it really is."

Hang on. You’re saying to yourself, “dentistry?” Yes, dentistry. Remember what Brown said: recurring revenue. People are fairly vigilant about their teeth. Well, and one other big thing: yield baby yield!

The nitrous oxide fueling the frenzy is credit. Heartland was already a junk-rated company, with debt of 7.4 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization as of last July. KKR’s takeover pushed that to about 7.9, according to Moody’s Investors Service, which considered the company’s leverage levels "very high."

Investors were so hungry that they accepted lenient terms in providing $1 billion of the leveraged loans that back the deal, making investing in the debt even riskier.

Nevermind this aspect:

Corporate dentistry has come under fire at times for pushing unnecessary or expensive procedures. But private equity firms say they’re drawn by efficiencies the chains can bring to individual dental practices, which these days require sophisticated marketing and expensive technology. The overall market for dental services is huge: $73 billion in 2017, according to investment bank Harris Williams & Co. Companies such as Heartland pay the dentists while taking care of everything else, including advertising, staffing and equipment. (emphasis added)

Your next dental exam powered by private equity.

Sadly, the same applies to eyes. Ophthalmology practices have been infiltrated by private equity too.

Your next cataracts surgery powered by private equity.

Don’t get us wrong. Despite the fact that we harp on about private equity all of the time, we do recognize that not all of private equity is bad. Among other positives, PE fills a real societal need, providing liquidity in places that may not otherwise have access to it.

But we want some consistency. To the extent that Congressmen, members of the mainstream media and workers want to bash private equity for its role in Toys R’ Us ultimate liquidation and in the #retailapocalypse generally, they may also want to ask their emergency room doctor, dentist and ophthalmologist who cuts his or her paycheck. And double and triple check whether a recommended procedure is truly necessary to service your eyes and mouth. Or the practice’s balance sheet.

Private Equity & Toys R Us (Long Active Management. Yield Baby Yield)

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⚡️Important Toys R Us Update⚡️

Late last night Toys R Us filed a motion seeking approval of a “global settlement” in its chapter 11 cases. A consensual deal to move the cases forward in a way that maximizes what remains of the estate — without the value leakage that would result from protracted litigation — is undoubtedly a good thing for all parties in interest.

Still, we’d be remiss if we didn’t note the following considering recent noise in the market:

Source: Settlement Motion, 7/17/18

Ah, the sacrifices.

💥KKR Effectively Tells Bernie Sanders to Pound Sand💥

Toys R Us (Short Severance Payments)

Toys R Us (Short Severance Payments). Ok, this is getting out of hand. Shortly after Dan Primack wrote that KKR ought to pay for 30,000 employees’ severance OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF KKR’S HEART, Pitchbook jumped in parroting the same nonsense.

Look. Don’t get us wrong. Long time readers know that we’ve been hyper-critical of the PE bros since our inception. But this is just ludicrous already. In “💩Will KKR Pay Toys' Severance?💩” and again in “🔥Amazon is a Beast🔥” we noted that “[t]here’s ZERO CHANCE IN HELL KKR funds severance payments.” We stand by that. Without any legal compunction to do so, these guys aren’t going to just open up their coffers to dole out alms to the affected. That’s not maximizing shareholder value. Those affected aren’t exactly future LPs.

But wait. This keeps getting better.

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that on July 5:

Nineteen members of Congress sent a letter to the private-equity backers of Toys “R” Us Inc. questioning their role in the toy retailer’s bankruptcy and criticizing the leveraged-buyout model as an engine of business failure and job loss.

The letter’s content? Per the WSJ:

It asks whether the investment firms deliberately pushed Toys “R” Us into bankruptcy and encourages them to compensate the roughly 33,000 workers who lost their jobs.

Take a look at this letter. It demonstrates an utter lack of understanding of how private equity works.

Meanwhile, Congress cannot get the President of the United States to turn over his tax returns with the entire country waiting for that to happen and yet we’re supposed to believe that a letter will compel KKR to make severance payments. Utterly laughable. KKR owns those fools and they know it. Okay: maybe not Bernie Sanders.

Imagine the response:

“Um, yes, Representative Poindexter. We did. We deliberately flushed hundreds of millions of dollars of equity checks down the toilet. We hear that makes a compelling marketing message to potential LPs of our next big fund.”

Thankfully, you don’t have to imagine the response because KKR already responded. Per the WSJ:

KKR issued a response dated July 6 stating that Toys “R” Us’s troubles were caused by market forces—specifically the growth of e-commerce retailers—and that the decision to liquidate was made by the company’s creditors, not KKR, and was against the firm’s wishes.

Furthermore:

KKR stated in its response that it reinvested $3.5 billion in Toys “R” Us over the course of its ownership and didn’t take any investment profits. It added that it wrote down its entire equity investment of $418 million and challenged reports that it had earned a profit on the investment.

“Even accounting for fees received from Toys ‘R’ Us, we have lost many millions of dollars. To find anyone who profited, one would need to look at the institutions that pushed for Toys to liquidate its U.S. business,” the firm wrote.

In other words: “Pound sand, Sanders.”

💩Will KKR Pay Toys' Severance? Part II. 💩

On Wednesday we bashed Dan Primack’s notion that KKR would fund Toys R Us’ severance payments. Apparently we weren’t the only ones. Primack subsequently wrote:

• Equity share: In writing about Toys "R" Us on Tuesday, I mentioned that private equity firms have an obligation to portfolio company employees. Some readers pushed back via email, but it's worth noting that Toys backer KKR has been providing equity to some of its portfolio companies (including Gardner Denver, CHI Overhead Doors and Capsugel).

• Obviously it's not apples-to-apples with Toys, but such equity-share does reflect a more modern private equity mentality toward portfolio company employees. Bloomberg wrote about the Gardner Denver example last year.

There’s ZERO CHANCE IN HELL KKR funds severance payments. Just stop Dan. If we’re wrong, we’ll gladly eat this.

Asset Values Soar: Human Asset Values. (Long Inflation)

Asset values have been soaring off into the stratosphere to the point that even Warren Buffett is complaining about a dearth of reasonably-priced opportunities (hence his short dalliance with Uber?). The FED, meanwhile, is keeping tabs on inflation; perhaps the Fed ought to look no farther than the legal world. It is experiencing two forms of inflation this week.

First, Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy announced that it was raising first year associate salaries to $190k and generally all associate salaries between $10k-15k. Choice bit from The American Lawyer:

“Two years have now gone by, and there is cost-of-living increases and inflation,” Edelman said. “We want to signal to the market that we do want the best, and we’re willing to pay for the best, and we think after two years, an additional increase is appropriate.”

Inflation indeed. As one biglaw partner told us a year ago, a clear cut sign of a market top is when biglaw firms raise first year associate salaries. Well, then…let the recession commence!

Indeed, nothing says "good timing" (or income inequality) like a pay raise to know-nothing lawyers at a time when Toys R Us’ fees are front page news and mad-as-hell employees are picketing KKR's offices. Sometimes biglaw can be its own worst enemy. More:

Edelman said the change would not have “a material effect on firm finances,” adding that he didn’t expect partner capital contributions to change.

Right. Because with 500 associates, the extra $5 million in expense will surely be passed on to the clients. Get ready for a fee increase folks. That’s something worth singing about in court even.

Anyway, we’re not hating. After all, Milbank needs to incentivize people to go to law school AND choose them over several other biglaw firms. Why would anyone do that if they can make $40k/month as a social media influencer? Why would anyone do that if they can be “Running a $500,000 Retail Empire by iPhone?” Good and serious question. That is the competition these days.

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Second, Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP announced that, in an effort to incentivize lawyers to stay, partnership (and, for some, counsel position) will now be offered to lawyers that have been with the firm for a mere 7.5 years. Per the ABA Journal,

Weil, Gotshal & Manges hopes to improve associate retention by cutting the wait for partnership by two years. 

Except, those "partners" will be non-share partners making “fixed income” rather than receiving partner distributions. And, except, further,

Lawyers in the niche counsel category for specialty practices can remain there as long as they stay at the firm. Lawyers in the other category get, at most, three years in the position. During that time, they may be promoted to partner. Those who don’t make it will be transitioned out of the firm.

Hahaha. C’mon. So you’ll basically have 10.5 years to prove that you merit equity partner before they unceremoniously toss you out into the wilderness…uh, sorry…”transitioned.” You know, rather than 9.5 years. But that new title though!! Title inflation!!

Query: where did Weil get that idea from? (Cough, Kirkland & Ellis). What's that saying: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? We guess they’re waiting 7.5 years before labeling someone a “partner” rather than 6 years so, uh, there’s that. Just what biglaw needs: more lawyers running around with an inflated sense of self.

On point.

Geoffrey is on the Ropes: Toys R' Us is in Trouble

Private Equity Backed Retail is in the Dumps

"No Reason to Exist" - Restructuring Banker

Big news this week was CNBC's report that Toys R' Us hired Kirkland & Ellis LLP to complement Lazard ($LAZ) in a potential restructuring transaction.* This was followed by an S&P downgrade (firewall). This is "Death by self-commoditization," someone said. Sure, that's part of it but the more obvious and immediate explanation is the $5+ billion of debt the company is carrying on its balance sheet (and the millions of dollars of annual interest payments). Which, naturally, quickly gets us to private equity: KKR ($KKR), Bain and Vornado Realty Trust ($VNO) own Toys R' Us and so some are quick to blame those PRIVATE EQUITY shops for YET ANOTHER retailer hitting the skids. Post-LBO, this company simply never could grow into its capital structure given (i) the power of the big box retailers (e.g., Walmart ($WMT) & Target ($TGT)) and (ii) headwinds confronting specialty brick-and-mortar retail today (yeah, yeah, blah, blah, Amazon). That said, the gravity of the near-term maturity, the company's current cash position, and the bond trading levels don't necessarily scream imminent bankruptcy. There must be more to this. Speculating here, but this could just be an international value grab. Alternatively, given the tremendous amount of blood in the (retail) waters, we're betting that suppliers are squeezing the company. Badly. Like very badly. And/or maybe the company is trying to scare its landlords into concessions. We mean, seriously, we're in September. And the company is talking about bankruptcy NOW? Mere months from peak (holiday) toy shopping? Strikes us as odd. Someone has an agenda here. 

On a positive note, we want to give the company some credit: it tried its best to control the narrative by releasing its list of must-have toys for the holidays on the same day the Kirkland news "leaked."

*For anyone taking notes, this is a genius stroke of business development by Lazard: pinpoint a potential distressed corporate candidate and then poach that company's Vice President of Corporate Finance. Power. Move. We dig it.