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Metrics for Tracking Debt Exposure

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Today we return to the issue of corporate debt, and which firms might feel more pressure in 2027 as they try to refinance old debt at today’s higher interest rates. Our previous post last week gave a few suggestions for how analysts can use Calcbench to track such data; now let’s consider a few more examples based on actual corporate disclosures.  To start, we used our Multi-Company page to pull up the 2025 disclosures of non-financial companies in the S&P 500. We looked at interest expense compared to net income, and charted those companies with the highest ratios of interest expense to net income. Figure 1, below, shows the top 10. Name Ticker Interest Expense Net Income Ratio American Airlines Group Inc. AAL $1,716,000,000 $111,000,000 1545.9% Aes Corp AES $1,407,000,000 $162,000,000 868.5% Omnicom Group Inc. ...
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Marked Down, Not Written Off: BDC Holdings Valued at 50–70 percent of Cost

We pulled the schedules of investments from more than 160 business development company filings for fiscal Q2 2026. We then looked for portfolio companies valued between 50% and 70% of cost: names that have lost at least 30% but still carry most of their value. Here's what stood out: Over 200 portfolio companies marked down at least 30%. Together they carry about $10.8 billion at cost, now valued at roughly 60 cents on the dollar, an unrealized loss of about $4.3 billion. The biggest holdings are software. Medallia, Cornerstone OnDemand, Kaseya, Symplr and Barracuda lead the list by cost, each held by eight or more BDCs. 84 of these companies are held by more than one BDC, and the BDCs often disagree. Curia Global's debt is marked at about 9% of cost by one lender and over 80% by others. Medallia's debt ranges from 39% to 51% depending on who holds it. The same company often appears under many names. Kaseya shows up under 14 different names across filers. Getting to a c...
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