Wednesday, October 7, 2015

As A Shocking $100 Billion In Glencore Debt Emerges, The Next Lehman Has Arrived

"One week ago, in a valiant attempt to defend the stock price of struggling commodity trading titan Glencore, one of the company's biggest cheerleaders, Sanford Bernstein's analyst Paul Gait (who has a GLEN price target of 450p) appeared on CNBC in what promptly devolved into a great example of just how confused equity analysts are when it comes to analyzing highly complex debt-laden balance sheets.
In the clip below, starting about 2:30 in, CNBC's Brian Sullivan gets into a heated spat with Gait over precisely how much debt Glencore really has, with one saying $45 billion the other claiming it is a whopping $100 billion.
The reason for Gait's confusion is that he simplistically looked at the net debt reported on Glencore's books... just as Ivan Glasenberg intended.
However, since Glencore - like Lehman - is first and foremost a trading operation, one also has to add in all the stated derivative exposure (something we did ten days ago), in addition to all the unfunded liabilities, off balance sheet debt, bank commitments and so forth, to get a true representation of just how big, or rather massive, Glencore's true risk is to its countless counterparties.
Conveniently for the likes of equity analysts such as Gait and countless others who still have GLEN stock at a "buy" rating, Bank of America has done an extensive analysis breaking down Glencore's true gross exposure. Here is the punchline:
We consider different approaches to Glencore’s debt. Credit agencies, such as S&P, start with “normal” net debt, i.e. gross debt less cash and then deduct some share (80% in the case of S&P of “RMIs” – Readily Marketable Inventories. These are considered to be “cash like” inventories (working capital) in the marketing business. At the last results, RMIs were about US$17.7 bn. Giving full credit for RMIs plus a pro-forma for the equity raise and interim dividend we derive a “Glencore Adjusted Net Debt” of c. US$28 bn.

On the other hand, from discussions with our banks team, we believe the banks industry (and ultimately regulators) may look at the number i.e. gross lines available (even if undrawn) + letters of credit with no credit for inventories held. On this basis, we estimate gross exposure (bonds, revolver, secured lending, letters of credit) at c. $100 bn.With bonds at around $36 bn, this would still leave $64 bn to the banks’ account (assuming they don’t own bonds).
Charted, here is why Sullivan and his $100 billion number was spot on, and why Glencore's banks suddenly realize the company has more gross exposure than its has total assets!..."
at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-07/shocking-100-billion-glencore-debt-emerges-next-lehman-has-arrived

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