Teekay Q1-2018: Still a leveraged mess

I won’t go into extensive detail over reading Teekay Corporation’s quarterly report (and daughter entities), but my summary is that the corporation and their daughters are still a leveraged mess.

The blood-letting at the Offshore (NYSE: TOO) subsidiary (no longer consolidated since Brookfield now formally is calling the shots) appears to be normalized, but management is on the verge of losing the Tankers subsidiary (NYSE: TNK). They just came to the realization that offering a dividend while trying to de-leverage the company is not so wise. The Tankers entity is bleeding cash with no recovery in sight. Shipping has been a miserable industry for half a decade now as overcapacity persists.

Teekay was trying to keep up the appearance of a minimal dividend since it was directly feeding into the cash flows of the parent (Teekay) entity, but the game is almost up – the only entity worth anything for Teekay is the LNG group (NYSE: TGP) which isn’t doing that badly – they are actually making money, but right now it is very slow in relation to the overall debt required to finance everything.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another debt crisis coming up for Teekay – why their January 2020 unsecured debt trades at around a 6.1% YTM is beyond me. I dumped out of their debt early this year (at 5 cents over par).

Teekay has value on its balance sheet as it does still own considerable equity interests in TOO, TGP and TNK, but operationally the only entity that will be feeding cash into it will be TGP, and immediate cash flows are going to be undoubtedly de-leveraging, especially as interest rates rise.

Teekay Corporation – Raising money

Teekay (NYSE: TK) is raising capital in the form of US$100 million in convertible unsecured debt (maturing 2023) and 10 million shares of common stock. Their former daughter entity, Teekay Offshore, raised some preferred share capital last week.

Teekay’s existing unsecured debt issue (disclosure: I own some) maturing in January 15, 2020 has been trading above par for quite some time. The stock is trading at relative highs ($10.70/share) and this action only has one reason: getting capital while the window of opportunity is still open. Their January 2020 unsecured debt is the majority of their existing debt.

I was not convinced and still am not convinced that oil and oil service companies are coming back from the dead. Teekay’s management choosing to sell equity at existing prices is another datapoint that supports this.

I hope management does not call out the January 2020 debt issue, but it seems to be likely. I will be holding on and collecting interest payments as much as I can before the inevitable call-out. I’m still quite stuck when it comes to investing cash at this stage in the market.

The “interest rate noose” that is slowly being tightened on the necks of the market will eventually hit the panic point when the market starts to have difficulty breathing. It’s pretty smart for players like Teekay to be doing what they’re doing right now – while they still can. I’d carefully look at companies that have upcoming maturity profiles from a position of credit weakness and ask whether you want to be invested in their equity.

Teekay / Teekay Offshore / Brookfield financing

Brookfield Business Partners (TSX: BBU.UN) announced a $750 million investment (Brookfield’s release) (Teekay’s release) in Teekay Offshore (NYSE: TOO).

I’ve written extensively about Teekay Offshore and thought they would cut their distributions to zero and likely cutting their preferred unit distributions because of impending financing issues. This prediction turned out to be mostly incorrect – they are cutting their common unit distribution to 1 penny per quarter (down from 11 cents), and maintaining their preferred distributions.

In general, my expectations for the outcome for this pending recapitalization transaction have been worse than what materialized.

Not surprisingly, Offshore’s preferred units are trading considerably higher in the markets – up about 28%.

Teekay (parent) unsecured debt traded up to 98.5 cents on the dollar today – I am happy regarding this transaction – it is likely to mature at par (January 2020) or earlier via a call option. Offshore debt holders have even more reason to be happy – theirs are up from 82 cents to 97 cents, with a 7% yield to maturity. (On a side note, I notice somebody was asleep at the switch at 5:00am today – there was a $100k bond trade for 90.8 cents on TK unsecured, which was a steal for the buy-side – NEVER leave those GTC orders out in the open unless if you’re willing to scan the news before the market opens!).

Summary thoughts (apologies in advance for this not being in a more professional manner, I am not writing from my usual location):

The first chart is from their today’s presentation, while the second chart was from an early 2016 presentation. Compare the two:

1. With this equity injection, Offshore buys itself a couple years of time (which is what they desperately needed) – however, their debt leverage goes from “very high” to “above average” – slide 9 is considerably above what they were anticipating in their 2016 slide when they initially recognized the pending financial crisis. Pay attention to the Y-Axis of those charts!
2. Teekay dumps its $200 million loan to Brookfield for $140 million cash and 11 million warrants in Offshore;
3. It’s not entirely clear what the terms of these warrants are, or how Brookfield picks up 51% control of the GP (they get 49% of it right now);
4. Offshore’s financial metrics (cash flows through vessel operations) should start to improve, but I suspect there will be upcoming challenges as long as the oil price environment is not supportive (thinking counterparty risk, potential future contract renewals, pricing pressure, etc. – examining Diamond Offshore, TransOcean, etc., although not strictly in the same market as TOO, leads one to believe that the present environment is also not favorable to maintenance offshore oil production expenditures);
5. Teekay also liquidated their preferred unit holding in Offshore, and this is functionally a sell-off to Brookfield.
6. The creation of a “ShuttleCo” subsidiary of Offshore will create some more financial complexity in the operation – they probably want to spin this out for valuation and/or leverage purposes (as this division apparently is doing reasonably well).
7. Offshore’s operational challenges and risks are still not going away with this equity injection, but Teekay has more or less divested as much as they could from them.
8. Teekay also get relieved of guarantees from Offshore, which will improve its financial position dramatically in the event of insolvency (this is huge for Teekay unsecured debt holders). Teekay is functionally at this point a play on their LNG daughter entity, while having some minority economic participation in offshore.
9. Teekay’s cash flows through Offshore will obviously be curtailed significantly, they have their own vessel operations which are cash neutral, so they will be solely reliant on either equity distributions of Offshore (if they decide to fully liquidate) or LNG’s distributions.

If I was an investor in the preferred shares or debt of Offshore, I’d be taking gains right now and going elsewhere.

I remain long TK unsecured debt and do not have any intentions to sell – I took a full position back in them last year. I’m not keen on any of the equity.

Teekay – the buzz from Seeking Alpha

There has been a considerable amount of bandwidth on the future outcome of Teekay and Teekay Offshore on the Seeking Alpha channel.

When you see this much bullishness on a public forum, watch out. The “news” (if you want to call it that) has already been baked in.

There is also a material amount of mis-information in some of the analysis presented on Seeking Alpha, including the J Mintzmyer analysis which got most of the flurry of TK/TOO posting started. There’s no point for me to argue about the fine details of the analysis here.

My original post about Teekay’s 2020 unsecured bonds of April 2016 still applies today – at a current price of 90.5 cents on the dollar they are in the lower part of my price range but not a wildly good buy as there is real risk involved. My initial purchase point was below 70 cents on the dollar back in early 2016. My only update to my April 2016 post is that I have long since offloaded my Teekay Offshore equity position – my optimism back then about TOO was considerably over-stated and when my own modelling changed, my price targets subsequently changed and I bailed out.

TK’s inherent value is primarily focused on their TGP entity (Mintzmyer got this correct, but grossly over-states the value of the company). Most of the discounting of TK unsecured debt’s value is that they are likely to offer guarantees to future TOO and/or TGP financings that would make it difficult for TK unsecured debtholders to realize value in the event of a Chapter 11 equivalent event (this would involve cross-defaults between entities and be incredibly messy to resolve). There is currently cross-default potential with TOO’s debt complex, not to mention that TK has made unsecured loans to TOO to bridge TOO’s liquidity situation. My general expectation is that there is a gigantic incentive for the controlling shareholder (Resolute Investments) to avoid a default scenario and would instead opt for a dilutive recapitalization instead, which would of course render TK unsecured debt maturing at par. I still think this partial recapitalization scenario is probable.

TK and TGP have announced dividends and distributions, respectively. The TK dividend surprised me somewhat as they are obligated to pay dividends by raising an equal amount in equity capital until a certain debt is paid off. TOO has been silent and they will likely be announcing suspensions in conjunction with some financing announcement in the upcoming weeks.

My assessment at present is that the only people that will be coming out of this with money are the debt holders. Such is life when oil is at US$45/barrel.