Zombies are commonly defined as companies that have failed to make enough money from operations in the past three years to pay even the interest on their loans, and the AP estimates there are around 2,000 in the U.S. alone.that they are just stumbling by on the brink of survival, barely able to pay even the interest on their loans and often just a bad business hit away from dying off for good.
Zombies are commonly defined as companies that have failed to make enough money from operations in the past three years to pay even the interest on their loans. AP's analysis found their ranks in raw numbers have jumped over the past decade by a third or more in Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the U.S., including companies that run Carnival Cruise Line, JetBlue Airways, Wayfair, Peloton, Italy’s Telecom Italia and British soccer giant Manchester United.
"Revenue went down, or didn't grow as much as projected, but that doesn’t mean they are all about to go bust," said Martin Fridson, CEO of research firm FridsonVision High Yield Strategy. The difference for many zombies is they lack deep cash reserves, and the interest they pay on many of their loans is variable, not fixed, so higher rates are hurting them right now. Most dangerously, zombie debt was often not used to expand, hire or invest in technology, but on buying back their own stock.
SmileDirectClub went from spending a little over $1 million a year on buying its own stock before the tax cut to spending $780 million as it boosted pay packages of top executives. One former CEO got $20 million in just four years. Stock in the heavily indebted teeth-straightening company plunged before it went out of business last year and put 2,700 people out of work.
In some cases, borrowed cash has gone straight into the pockets of controlling shareholders and wealthy family owners. The U.S. government is expected spend $870 billion this year on interest on its debt alone, up a third in a year and more than it spends on defense. In South Korea, consumers are tapped out as credit card and other household debt hit fresh records. In the United Kingdom, homeowners are missing payments on their mortgages at a rate not seen in years.
For the first few months of this year, hundreds of zombies refinanced their loans as lenders opened their wallets in anticipation that the Federal Reserve would start cutting in March. That new money helped stocks of more than 1,000 zombies in AP’s analysis rise 20% or more in the past six months across the dozen countries.Through the summer and into September, when many investors now expect the first and only Fed cut this year, zombies will have to pay off $1.
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