While securitized assets stand out in growth, debentures lead in volume: funding approaches R$ 235 billion in 2022.
Two papers that stand out for being exempt from Income Tax stood out in issues carried out on the capital market in November: the CRAs (Certificates of Agribusiness Receivables) and the CRIs (Certificates of Real Estate Receivables). Assets, which had already been growing throughout the year, reached R$ 1.2 billion in the case of CRAs and R$ 4.5 billion in the case of CRIs.
Together, the instruments add up to a volume of R$ 79.9 billion in issues this year, an increase of 69% compared to the same period in 2021. Data are from the Brazilian Association of Financial and Capital Market Entities (Anbima) .
If we consider the offers of CRAs that ended in 2022, they were R$ 38.7 billion between January and November, with an average term of almost eight years (a record for the series since 2016). “Securitized products have established themselves as an option for diversifying portfolios, both for managers and investors, guaranteeing an important position as financing vehicles for long-term projects, especially in strategic segments”, evaluates José Eduardo Laloni, vice-president of Anbima.
The exemption from IR is one of the main advantages of papers. Investors looking for bolder options will find an alternative in them. With a remuneration normally higher than that of government bonds, receivables certificates are issued by private companies – the securitization companies. And they are backed by credit operations linked to the real estate and agribusiness sectors.
CRIs and CRAs are two different (though similar) types of securitized fixed income securities. Securitization is the same as transforming receivables – such as installments from a credit sale or financing payments – into securities that can be purchased by investors and traded in the market.
According to Anbima, regarding CRA holders, intermediaries and other participants linked to the offer are the main creditors, with 42.8%. Individuals appear next, with 32.4%. Mutual funds started to take a bigger position in the primary market, of 16.2%. Other institutional investors and foreign investors hold 8.6% and 0.1%, in that order.
A competitor worthy of the debentures?
“What we observe in 2022 is the capital market expanding to debt instruments as a whole, due to the high interest cycle that shifted the allocation of variable income investors in search of more attractive remuneration in structured debt funding”, says Thiago Lobato, Head of Capital Solutions at Ártica.
According to him, in addition, the advantages of incentivized assets related to tax exemption for individuals enhance the attraction of “additional pockets” for this type of instrument. “In the same direction, looking at issuing companies, we observe greater access to the market by middle market [small companies] and regulatory advances in the sector that facilitated this growth trajectory”.
The expectation, says Lobato, is that the scenario being designed for next year will be in line with market developments in 2022. That is, the high interest rate tends to maintain the allocation of funds and other income investors fixed.
In addition, advances in market regulation tend to facilitate this path for companies that increasingly rely on this funding port. “Thus, it is expected that the volume of commercial notes will be increasingly representative and the securitization market will maintain a representative volume compared to private credit funding, which for the most part is still via debentures”.
Debentures
Considering all capital market instruments, both fixed and variable income, issues by Brazilian companies totaled R1TP4Q 21.5 billion in November. The accumulated result for the year reaches R$ 466.5 billion, a reduction of 10.6% compared to the same period in 2021. So far, offers in progress and under analysis add up to R$ 8.9 billion and R$ 8.4 billion , respectively (disregarding the volume of share offerings).
The most representative assets are concentrated in fixed income – debentures, for example. While CRIs and CRAs grew the most, debentures were the assets with the highest volume of funding. Between January and November, the instrument traded almost R$ 235 billion. That's even with a drop last month, when debentures raised R$ 8.6 billion, against R$ 21.3 billion in October.
This low in the month is related to the movement of anticipation of issuances by companies during this year and the domestic uncertainties associated with the economic policy of the next government, which left the interest curve higher, mainly in the longer vertices.
Throughout the year, Brazilian companies secured financing especially from investment funds (45.5%), intermediaries and other linked participants (43.9%), which were the main underwriters of the debenture offerings.
Variable income
This is definitely not the time for variable income: there were no records of operations in November. In the year, R$ 52.3 billion raised in the domestic market, R$ 406 million in IPOs and R$ 51.9 billion in follow-ons.
To the detriment of variable income operations, interest rate cuts should be postponed from June to August 2023, and the Selic rate should remain in double digits until the end of next year, according to Anbima's Macroeconomic Group.
In the foreign market, despite the relative improvement, no operations were registered in the last five months. During the year, there were 12 operations, corresponding to volumes of US$ 5 billion in fixed income and US$ 125 million in variable income.