The Basics
FactSet’s Debt Capital Structure DataFeed provides summary and detailed information on the liabilities of global companies. Debt data is captured from financial statements, credit agreements, and indentures and includes coverage of everything from a company’s long-term debt obligations to short-term credit facilities. Additionally, information on a company’s entity structure allows for detailed analysis of liabilities by ultimate parent and immediate issuer.
The Coverage
Covering 75,000+ global reporting entities linked to over 45,000 ultimate parents, FactSet’s DCS DataFeed has comprehensive coverage of company debt liability information. The instrument coverage includes revolving credit (both available and amount outstanding), term loans, notes, bonds, and other borrowings that allow a user to thoroughly understand a company’s balance sheet obligations. History is available globally dating back to 2006.
The Differentiators
FactSet’s Debt Capital Structure DataFeed is unique in that FactSet’s content collection and credit analyst processes reconcile DCS data to a company’s balance sheet information as well as to the terms and conditions of each individual debt instrument. The process of collecting and harmonizing DCS data requires accounting for all public debt, other debt, and any adjustments for currency, swaps, amortization, capitalization of leases, convertibles, etc. FactSet’s team combs through source documents, linking market identifiers, and reconciling relationships between the ultimate parent and subsidiary issuers of debt. This information is not included in every filing by a company, and FactSet’s process tracks these details over time, ensuring a user has an accurate and complete understanding of a company’s liabilities.
Example Use Case
The S&P 500 (excluding companies in the FactSet RBICS Finance sector) has over $4.5 trillion in balance sheet liabilities outstanding as of March 31, 2019. Using FactSet’s Debt Capital Structure DataFeed it is possible to generate a thorough understanding of the structure and distribution of that debt load at the index, sector, and company level.
The two sectors with the heaviest debt burden are Consumer Non-Cyclicals and Healthcare, with a combined $1.2 trillion+ in liabilities. The Debt Maturity schedule at the market level shows that these sectors also have among the largest amount of debt coming due in the next two years.
Considering these companies will need to retire or rollover this debt burden in the next few years, it makes sense to check recent issuance to gain insight into the potential term structures of the replacement debt. Consumer Non-Cyclicals have issued nearly $110 billion in debt in the last year with most coupons ranging in the 3.0-4.5% range. Healthcare companies have had more modest issuance, with less than $50 billion, but a much wider range of coupons being paid.
Focusing on the top 10 companies in Healthcare, we can see Pfizer has a substantial amount of debt due in the next two years.
Pfizer has $3.1 billion of commercial paper and an additional $4.9 billion in senior unsecured debt all coming due in 2019 with average coupons of 2.4% and 1.8%, respectively.
Comparing the Pfizer debt maturing in 2019 to the debt the company has issued over the last two years highlights the potential increased interest burden the company may face. Over the last two years, Pfizer issued around $5 billion in fixed rate debt at an average coupon of 4.2%, giving a clear indication of the likely rates the company will face when replacing its soon-to-be maturing debt.
FactSet’s Debt Capital Structure Data Feed allows you to seamlessly shift from high-level analysis of markets and indexes down to an incredibly detailed and thorough view of an individual company’s debt liabilities. This information is critical for fundamental and credit analysis and can be transformed into powerful systematic investment factors as well.
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