While the outlook has improved, asset selection remains the key to returns

Ares' Teiki Benveniste sits down with Livewire to discuss credit market risks and opportunities.
Chris Conway

Livewire Markets

Volatility is going to remain, corporate results are going to vary wildly, and defaults might increase. 

That's the lay of the land, according to Ares Global Credit Income Fund portfolio manager and Head of Ares Wealth Management Solutions, Australia, Teiki Benveniste

But there is no need to panic, according to Benveniste. Instead, being mindful of playing in the right sectors, and extracting the highest possible level of current yield with the minimum amount of volatility is the way to play. 

"What it means for us is that when we look at our portfolios, we're going to be very mindful of the potential price volatility that higher-duration assets may add to our portfolios", says Benveniste. 

In this Expert Insights, Benveniste provides his take on the current interest rates cycle, explains how portfolio positioning has evolved over the past couple of years, and shares his outlook and how that is impacting the way the Ares Global Credit Income Fund is positioned. 

Note: This interview was filmed on 9 August, 2023



Edited transcript 

What is your take on the interest rate cycle?

If you look at the last few years, it's been very volatile and I think expectations haven't really been met by the reality of markets. 

If you think back in Australia after COVID, the expectation was for the RBA to not raise rates for a while. We ended up having significantly higher rates, much quicker than expected. 

You think about what happened in the US as well with the Fed talking about inflation being transitory. Well, we quickly realised that it wasn't, and then more recently, I think last year markets were expecting a recession in 2023, lower rates as well.

We're sitting here today looking at rates having remained elevated, so there's a lot of uncertainty out there around rates in general but, on top of that, uncertainly around geopolitical events and things like that. 

Our take is that the environment is going to remain volatile for the foreseeable future. That rates seem to be higher for longer compared to what the market has priced previously. 

What it means for us is that when we look at our portfolios, we're going to be very mindful of the potential price volatility that higher-duration assets may add to our portfolios.

How have the RBA’s interest rate rises affected your portfolio?

If you look at what we've done in Australia since May 2020, when we launched the Ares Global Credit Income Fund, it's a fund that can play across floating rate corporate loans, fixed rate corporate bonds, but also alternative credit. 

We started the fund with about 40% exposure to fixed rate assets because, from a relative value perspective, we were at a point in the cycle where we felt credit spreads were attractive, the rates environment was supporting having longer duration assets in our portfolios, and so that really benefited the portfolios throughout 2020.

Then you fast forward to 2021, particularly the early parts of 2021, what we started to see from our portfolio companies across the Ares credit platform - some of them reporting monthly versus public companies reporting on a quarterly basis - we really started to see that inflation was not transitory, that it was stickier than expected than what was priced in markets. 

We basically moved our portfolio towards more floating rate assets. So when interest rates started to rise, we didn't experience in this portfolio the same price volatility as if we had more fixed rate assets.

But there was an added benefit in that because we had floating rate credit, you started to see the coupon of those floating rate instruments increasing with higher rates. And so we came to the end of 2021 and what we saw is that the return of the portfolio was around 4% and had benefitted from higher income generation. 

Then you look at 2022, there was a very different environment, the inflation worries transformed into recessionary worries. You started to see credit spreads widening, so if you want a secondary effect of higher rates. But again, the portfolio behaved pretty well because we had that increased income generation from higher coupon. That helped buffer some of that price volatility.

We had also moved up in quality in the portfolio. So while spreads widened, we were higher up in quality. And the portfolio, then in 2022, when you had things like the investment grade market in the US being down around 15%, the fund only had a drawdown of 3% for the year 2022. 

In 2023, we continue to benefit from those higher rates. We continue to benefit from high current income and in the six months to June 2023, we've had about 4% of net performance for the fund.

How is this outlook impacting the way you construct your portfolio right now?

I think generally the outlook right now is maybe slightly more positive than let's say a year ago.

A year ago, we were really moving up in quality, de-risking our portfolios in general. Right now we're pretty happy with our risk position, so that's the first thing. 

The second thing is when we look at what we're trying to do in the portfolio, we remain very focused on generating high levels of current income and current yield. The portfolio right now is about 7.8% current yield at the asset level, while trying to take as little mark-to-market risk as possible. Our spread duration exposure is around 3.5 years. 

We are really trying to minimise that price volatility because our view is that potentially we're going to remain in a very volatile environment.

The other thing to take into consideration is that while earnings have been maybe better than expected, we think that there's going to be a lot of dispersion going forward in how corporates are going to behave.

Higher rates are going to start impacting certain credit [assets] that you might see defaults increasing in the market. What it means is that credit security selection is going to be, we think, quite a big driver of forward returns. 

We are doing all of that by being very mindful of still playing in sectors that are defensive, that are non-cyclical, so that we can extract the highest possible level of current yield with the minimum amount of volatility. 

One thing we've started to see as well in the portfolio is that we have started to add fixed-rate assets, but shorter-dated ones that have been deeply discounted now. So high-yield bonds, single-Bs, for example, trading in the 90s, we feel are quite an attractive opportunity right now in the portfolio.

Consistent income throughout market cycles

To learn more about how Ares Australia Management navigates inefficiencies in the market to generate attractive, income producing portfolios please visit our website.

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