Tag Archives: Mittelstandsanleihen

MIFA Update (2) – And why I would prefer Russian shares to German Bonds

Posted on by 8 comments

The story around the German bicylce producer MIFA seems to get more and more interesting. Yesterday I posted the update on the (not so surprising) losses detected now from previuos years of dubious inventory accounting.

A few minutes after I published the post, MIFA came out with another “breaking news” which starts the following way:

MIFA: Investment agreement with Indian bike manufacturer HERO concluded,
equity investment pursuant to capital increases from authorised capital

– Investment agreement with OPM Global B.V., a subsidiary of Hero Cycles
Ltd., about an equity capital investment in the amount of EUR 15
million concluded

– FERI EuroRating Services AG reduced issue rating of corporate bond

– Annual General Meeting expected for third quarter of 2014

From the headline one would conclude that the rich Indian “uncle” finally will save the company. Handelsblatt for instance translated this into a headline which one could translate into “MIFA secures investor”.

For the real “juice” of this announcement, you have to read down a little bit towards the end of the annoncement:

The investment commitment by OPM Global B.V. entails significant financial contributions of MIFA’s financing partners and is subject to various conditions precedent, especially to the condition of a haircut in the amount of EUR 15-20 million of the bondholders as well as an exemption from the German Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) from the obligation to make a public takeover offer under the The German Securities Acquisition and Takeover Act.

So to understand this again, the facts:

– The 2013 issued MIFA bond has a total volume of 25 mn EUR
– most likely, the covenants of the bonds are breached, so MIFA would have to pay back the bond on short notice
– the “Indian uncle” will only invest, if bond holders accept a haircut of 60-80%

Normally, if a company cannot pay back a bond, the company will go into default. the shareholders will be wiped out and the company then changes ownership from the shareholders to creditors i.e. bondholders for instance via a debt/equity swap.

at MIFA, they try to reverse the order. Let’s look at another part of the announcement: Hero is commiting to pay 15mn for the following shares:

The cash capital increases shall comprise a 10% capital increase with subscription rights being excluded and a subsequent rights issue with a total number of 4.9 million new shares to be issued. OPM Global B.V. has undertaken to subscribe all such shares which together with additional existing shares to be transferred from
certain existing shareholders would result in an overall participation of the investor of up to 47 %.

With currently 9,8 mn shares, only (0,98 +4.9) = 5.88 mn new shares will be issued. With a total new sharecount of 15,68 mn shares, the old shareholders would keep economically (9,8/15,68) =62,5% of the company while senior bondholders would keep only 20-40% of their bond prinicpal. In my opinion it should be the other way round.

It will be interesting to see if bondholders are accepting this pretty obvious blackmailing. The argument will most likely be that if they don’t accept, they will end up with nothing. Praktiker by the way tried a similar tactic, going to bondholders first . In Praktiker’s case, both shareholders and bondholders ended with nothing.

That the proposed transaction would be better for shareholders than for bond holders shows clearly in the price action this morning. While the bond lost further from around 33% to around 27% (or -20% in relative terms), the shares are up more than +20% at the time of writing.

Coming back to my headline: When i bought my first two small Russian share positions (Sberbank, Sistema) many people commented that they would never buy Russian shares because property rights are not respected in Russia. This might be even correct, but you get very cheap valuations and if they do respect property rights, tzhe potential upside is high.

In German bond markets however, property rights are even worse in my opinion once a company is in trouble. As we learned at IVG, subordinated bond holders can be wiped out without blinking an eye and looking at the last few cases, senior bond holders are now expected to rescue the company before shareholders commit a single cent. Under German insolvency proceedings, often the old management carries on (WGF) and wipes out bondholders as they wish. However, other than in Russia, there is no upside to this if you buy a newly issued German bond at par. So for me, if I would need to choose between a newly issued German Corporate bond and a Russian stock, the choice is clear….

The sad part of this story is that this event along with many other similar event will hurt corporate bond issuance in Germany in the long run, especially for smaller companies. With the banks continuing to shrink, this is not good news for those German Mittelstand companies who need debt funding.

I am somehow tempted to become a “bond activist” here….Let’s see how this continues….

Quick MIFA update – How to “play” covenants

Posted on by 6 comments

Disclosure: No position, for educational purposes only.

2 weeks ago I had a quick look at the troubles at MIFA, the German bicycle manufacturer.

The official version was that they had a short term problem with their accounting but no liquidity issues. This was the last paragraph of their press release in MArch:

MIFA expects to break even at the after-tax level in the first quarter of 2014. It will not be possible for the company to issue a reliable guidance concerning the full 2014 financial year until the preparation of the annual financial statements has been completed. The company has sufficient liquidity for its operating business.

So it was quite surprising that the company today, MIFA announced the following:

– The CEO is now gone forever
– they did a “sale-lease back” of their real estate to the local Government, raising 5,7 mn EUR

So to a certain extent they do seem to have liquidity issues, otherwise they would not sell their “last shirt” for cash. The more interesting part for me is the fact that “sale-lease back” is economically nothing else than a “secured loan” on the real estate.

Looking into the bond prospectus, the outstanding bond includes a so-called “Negative Pledge” covenant:

Negativverpflichtung:
Der Emittent verpflichtet sich, solange Schuldverschreibungen ausstehen, jedoch nur bis zu dem Zeitpunkt, an dem alle Beträge an Kapital und Zinsen, die gemäß den Schuldverschreibungen
zu zahlen sind, der Zahlstelle zur Verfügung gestellt worden sind, keine Grundpfandrechte, Pfandrechte oder sonstige dingliche Sicherungsrechte (jedes solches Sicherungsrecht ein “Sicherungsrecht”) in Bezug auf ihren gesamten Geschäftsbetrieb oder ihr gesamtes Vermögen oder ihre Einkünfte, jeweils gegenwärtig oder zukünftig, oder Teile davon zur Sicherung von anderen Kapitalmarktverbindlichkeiten oder zur Sicherung einer vom Emittenten oder einer seiner Tochterunternehmen gewährten Garantie oder Freistellung bezüglich einer Kapitalmarktverbindlichkeit einer anderen Person zu bestellen, ohne gleichzeitig für alle unter den Schuldverschreibungen zahlbaren Beträge dasselbe Sicherungsrecht zu bestellen oder für alle unter den Schuldverschreibungen zahlbaren Beträge solch ein anderes Sicherungsrecht zu bestellen, das von einer unabhängigen, international anerkannten Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft als gleichwertig anerkannt wird. Dies gilt vorbehaltlich bestimmter Ausnahmen.
“Kapitalmarktverbindlichkeit” bezeichnet jede Verbindlichkeit aus Schuldverschreibungen oder ähnliche verbriefte Schuldtitel oder aus Schuldscheindarlehen oder aus dafür übernommenen Garantien und/oder Gewährleistungen.

The covenants do actually prevent them to take out a typical German “Schuldscheindarlehen” against their real estate. Interestingly, an economically equivalent sale-lease back (which will be booked as financial liability) doesn’t seem to violate this covenant.

Should for some reason, MIFA go bankrupt, the recovery for the bondholders will be significantly lower than before as the real estate now belongs to someone else and will not be part of any liquidation proceeds.

I find it interesting how easy it is to circumvent such covenants with economically equivalent transaction. A reason more to stay as far away as possible from German corporate bonds in general and the so-called “Mittelstandsanleihen”. There is no “seniority” of those senior bonds, those instruments are clearly “junior” capital for German corporates. Nevertheless, bondholders seemed to like it:

It will be interesting to see if today’s bounce in the bond price is similar to what happened at Praktiker when they announced their first “rescue” and the bond price doubled from 40% to 80% before then collapsing to close to zero. Or maybe the Indians are already on their way with big suitcases full of frsh money. Who knows ? But a lot to learn for bond investors.