Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities: Defensive Play

This CMBS sector report is excerpted from the First Quarter 2019 Fixed-Income Outlook.

The fourth quarter of 2018 provided a stark reminder of the precarious nature of the current market environment. Concern over global growth and the policy risks around trade and foreign policy led to a spike in volatility. Given the prevailing investment environment, and with the commercial real estate (CRE) recovery entering its ninth year, we continue to favor more defensive, loss-remote, principal-bearing bonds. We also favor senior interest-only bonds in conduit CMBS and both static and managed CRE-CLO investments with proven deal sponsors at spreads similar to or better than conduit spreads.

In 2018, conduit issuance dropped to $40.2 billion from the $47.4 billion issued in 2017 and the $47.6 billion issued in 2016. Despite this decline in conduit issuance, partly precipitated by the rise in issuance of CRE-CLOs, CMBS conduit remains the largest asset class in the private commercial real estate securitized market. CRE-CLO issuance had a record year in 2018, growing over 90 percent year over year. However, in 2019 the CRE-CLO market may struggle if investor demand for wide spreads on the liabilities persists. In late 2018, the spreads on the underlying loans did not widen as much as the spreads on the bonds, so issuing a CRE-CLO during that time did not make economic sense.

Conduit underwriting has remained relatively disciplined since the financial crisis, providing higher quality collateral pools. Average new-issue conduit underwritten loan-to-value (LTV) ratios rose 0.9 percentage point to 60.3 percent in 2018, but are down from 65.7 percent in 2014. Underwriters’ restraint regarding LTV ratios has largely been driven by investor preference, as issuers who have come to market with higher LTV conduit deals have suffered from softer demand and wider spreads. While some market skeptics fear the potential for manipulation of valuations in the underwriting process, there is no arguing that LTVs have decreased in recent years. Fitch Ratings Stressed LTVs can also be seen trending downward.

We also continue to favor seasoned conduit bonds to the extent they are available in the secondary market. These often trade at the same spread as new-issue bonds with less spread duration, especially at the junior AAA to single-A rating level. This, along with the flat swap curve, results in similar yields for the seasoned bonds. Additionally, the underlying properties in the collateral have enjoyed several years of significant price appreciation along with amortization of the loans, resulting in a decline in leverage.

—Shannon Erdmann, Director; Phil Hoehn, Vice President; Darragh Murphy, Vice President

Important Notices and Disclosures

This article is distributed for informational purposes only and should not be considered as investing advice or a recommendation of any particular security, strategy or investment product. It contains opinions of the authors but not necessarily those of Guggenheim Partners or its subsidiaries. The authors’ opinions are subject to change without notice. Information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, but are not assured as to accuracy. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Investing involves risk. In general, the value of fixed-income securities fall when interest rates rise. High-yield securities present more liquidity and credit risk than investment grade bonds and may be subject to greater volatility. Asset-backed securities, including mortgage-backed securities, may have structures that make their reaction to interest rates and other factors difficult to predict, making their prices volatile and they are subject to liquidity risk. Investments in floating rate senior secured syndicated bank loans and other floating rate securities involve special types of risks, including credit risk, interest rate risk, liquidity risk and prepayment risk. Guggenheim Investments represents the following affiliated investment management businesses of Guggenheim Partners, LLC: Guggenheim Partners Investment Management, LLC, Security Investors, LLC, Guggenheim Funds Investment Advisors, LLC, Guggenheim Funds Distributors, LLC, GS GAMMA Advisors, LLC, Guggenheim Partners Europe Limited, and Guggenheim Partners India Management.

©2019, Guggenheim Partners, LLC. No part of this article may be reproduced in any form, or referred to in any other publication, without express written permission of Guggenheim Partners, LLC.

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