High Rates Crush $200 Billion of Junk Debt, BofA Says

US companies with about $200 billion in debt — 10% of the junk market — can’t survive at prevailing elevated interest rates, according to Bank of America. “At the bottom decile, we are looking at issuers that are in most likelihood not going to be able to come out of this high-rate episode without doing something to their balance sheet,” says Oleg Melentyev, head of US high-yield strategy at Bank of America, in the latest Credit Edge podcast from Bloomberg Intelligence. “Half of that segment is free-cash-flow negative unless the Fed cuts interest rates soon and deep — which is a pretty weak assumption,” he tells Bloomberg News’ James Crombie and Bloomberg Intelligence Credit Analyst Matthew Geudtner. Also in this episode, Melentyev and Geudtner discuss the outlook for companies in the commodity and capital goods sectors. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.