Navigating Corporate Creditworthiness in a High-Interest Environment

Our analysts Andrew Sheets and Vishwas Patkar take stock of the U.S. credit market, noting which segments are on firm footing going into a period of slower growth.

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Andrew Sheets: Welcome to Thoughts On the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Head of Corporate Credit Research at Morgan Stanley.

Vishwas Patkar: And I'm Vishwas Patkar, Head of U.S. Credit Strategy at Morgan Stanley.

Andrew Sheets: Today on the program, we're going to have the first in a series of conversations covering our outlook for credit around the world.

It's Wednesday, June 4th at 2pm in London.

Vishwas Patkar: And 9am in New York.

Andrew Sheets: Vishwas, along with many of our colleagues at Morgan Stanley, we recently updated our 12-month outlook for credit markets around the world. Focusing on your specialty, the U.S., how do you read the economic backdrop and what do you think it means for credit at a high level?

Vishwas Patkar: So, our central scenario of slowing growth, somewhat firm inflation and no rate cuts from the Fed until the first quarter of 2026 – when I put all of that together, I view that as somewhat mixed for credit. It's good for certain segments of the market, not as good for others.

I think the positive on the one side is that with the recent de-escalation in trade tensions, recession risks have gone lower. And that's reflected in our economists' view as well. I think for an asset class like credit, avoiding that drill downside tail I think is important. The other positive in the market today is that the level of all in yields you can get across the credit spectrum is very compelling on many different measures.

The negative is that we are still looking at a fair bit of slowing in economic activity, and that's a big downshift from what we've been used to in the past few years. So, I would say we're certainly not in the Goldilocks environment that we saw for credit through the second half of last year. And it's important here for investors to be selective around what they invest in within the credit market.

Andrew Sheets: So, Vishwas, you kind of alluded to this, but you know, 2025 has been a year that so far has been dominated by a lot of these large kind of macro questions around, you know, what's going to happen with tariffs. Big moves in interest rates, big moves in the U.S. dollar. But credit is an asset class that's, you know, ultimately about lending to companies. And so how do you see the credit worthiness of U.S. corporates? And how much of a risk is there that with interest rates staying higher for longer than we expected at the start of the year – that becomes a bigger problem?

Vishwas Patkar: Yeah, sure. I think it's a very important question Andrew because I think taking a call on markets based on the gyrations in headlines is very hard. But in some ways, I think this question of the credit worthiness of U.S. companies is more important and I think it really helps us filter the signal from the noise that we've seen in markets so far this year.

I would say broadly, the health of corporate balance sheets is pretty good and, in some ways, I think it's maybe a more distinguishing feature of this cycle where corporate credit overall is on a firmer footing going into a period of slower growth – than what we may have seen in prior instances. And you can sort of look at this balance sheet health along a few different lines.

In aggregate, we haven't really seen credit markets grow a lot in the last few years. M&A activity, which is usually a harbinger of corporate aggression, has also been fairly muted in absolute terms. Corporate balance sheet leverage has not grown. And I think we've been in this high-interest rate environment, which has kept some of these animal spirits at bay. Now what this means is, that the level of sensitivity of credit markets to a slow down in the economy is somewhat lower.

It does not mean that credit markets can remain immune no matter what happens to the economy. I think it's clear if we get a recession, spread should be a fair bit wider. But I think in our central scenario, it makes us more confident than otherwise that credit overall can hold up okay.

Now your question around the risk of rates staying higher. This I think goes back to my point about where in the credit market you're looking. I think up the quality spectrum, I think there are actually – there's a lot of demand tailwinds for credit given the pickup in sponsorship we've seen from insurance companies and pension funds in this cycle.

At the other end of the quality spectrum, if you're looking at highly levered capital structures, that's where I think the risk of interest rates being high can lead to defaults being sort of around average levels and higher than they would otherwise be.

Andrew Sheets: So, Vishwas, kind of sticking with that central scenario, kind of briefly, what would be a segment of U.S. credit that you think offers some of the best risk adjusted return at the moment? And what do you think offers some of the worst?

Vishwas Patkar: Yep. So, we framed our credit outlook as being good for quality, bad

for beta. So, as that suggests, I think this is a fairly good environment for investment grade credit. In our base case, we are calling for double digit total returns. In IG we also expect investment grade credit to modestly outperform government bonds.

And I would sort of extend that to the upper tiers within the high yield market as well, specifically BBs. And where I would say risk reward looks the weakest is the lowest tier. So, for CCCs and for many segments within Bs where leverage is fairly elevated, debt costs are still high. We think this is still a challenging environment where growth is set to slow and rate cuts are still a fair bit out the outer forecast rise.

Andrew Sheets: So far we focused on that central scenario, but let's close out with how things could be different. In our view, what do you think are the realistically better and worse scenarios for U.S. credit this year, and how does that shape your overall view on the market?

Vishwas Patkar: So, I think the better scenario for credit versus our base case potentially revolve around tariffs being rolled back even further. And it's essentially a repeat of the second half of 2024, where you had a combination of good growth and declining inflation and rate cuts moving up versus our expectations.

I think in that scenario, it's likely that you see investment grade credit spreads go back to the tights that we saw in December. On the flip side, I think the worst scenario really is you know – what if we are being too optimistic about growth? And what if the economy is set to slow much further? And then what if we get a recession?

So, I think in that environment, we see spreads retesting the wides that we saw through the volatility in April. Although even here, I would draw an important nuance that because of some of the fundamental and technical tailwinds I discussed earlier, we think spreads even in this downside scenario may not test the types of levels that we've seen through prior bear markets.

Andrew Sheets: Vishwas, thanks for taking the time to talk.

Vishwas Patkar: Thanks, Andrew.

Andrew Sheets: And thanks for sharing a few minutes of your day with us. If you enjoy Thoughts of the Market, let us know by leaving a review wherever you listen, and tell a friend or colleague about us today.