Two pieces of sunshine in the Deer-folio through the dark clouds of current market sentiment.
First, Apollo held its second investor day within a 12 month period, this one focused on its insurance business. Naturally I am interested. Though I haven’t listened or read a transcript of the presentation yet, the big nugget was the company increased guidance for its largest earnings stream by ~20%, driving ~10% overall post-tax accretion to 2022 guidance all else equal (it’s not…). This is the perfect environment for Apollo to thrive in, thus I am hopeful that the company is able to transact on needle moving deals, particularly reinsuring legacy blocks of insurance. The five year plan has the company doing ~$150B in inorganic block transactions, so I would presume from the outside in, now is a good at time as any with rates up, reducing the losses on the liability side of the legacy insurers books.
Second, we’re entirely long floating rate debt and our equity portfolio companies have fixed rate debt (for the most part). As such, our debt positions have pushed past LIBOR / SOFR floors (mostly in the 75-100bps range) and increased earnings from higher rates is dropping straight to distributable income. While the bump isn’t massive, it’s a nice drop the bottom line as equities are declining broadly speaking. On the equity side, the hope is that inflationary forces push up the income of the businesses (or properties) so that when an eventual refinance happens, the new debt rates are palatable.
So while daily news and marks may tell one story, there may be another under the surface.
Disclosure: We own shares of Apollo, this is not investment advice. Do your own work.