“Credit Default Swap (CDS, hereafter) contracts allow investors to trade on and transfer the credit risk of a company. Traditionally, CDS spreads represent the fair insurance price of the credit risk of a company. (Arakelyan, Serrano, 2016)”
Described as Figure 1, protection buyer is buying CDS protection from protection seller, paying periodic premium expressed as spreads of principal amount. As an exchange, the protection buyer will get the protection of principal amount when credit event occurs. Here, protection seller will be exposed to the risk of reference entity, mostly usual bond issuers. While real bond or fixed income can only be traded in the market after the issuer actually financed using debt securities, CDS doesn’t need the reference entity to be involved as it is just a contract between protection buyer and seller using the reference entity. Therefore, CDS can be traded those entities without much liquidity in debt securities and also the protection buyers and sellers can freely agree on maturity of the contract by themselves. This virtue help CDS contracts are much more liquid in the market with tighter bid/offer spread, or transaction costs.
Here, protection seller will be exposed to the risk of reference entity, mostly usual bond issuers. Table 1 shows the cash flow comparison of bond investor and CDS protection seller. Though the definition of credit event can be a big different, [1]as we can see, except the fact that there is no notional amount transfer, the pay-off of CDS protection seller is very similar to bond investors’.
| Bond Investor | CDS Protection Seller | |
| Trade Date | Notional Amount | – |
| Holding Period | Notional Amount x Coupon Rate | Premium as Notional Amount x Premium |
| Maturity | Notional Amount + Last Coupon Payment | – |
| Credit Event | Notional Amount x Recovery Ratio Or in different expression, Notional Amount -{Notional Amount x (1 – Recovery Ratio)} | -{Notional Amount x (1 – Recovery Ratio)} |
Table 1. Pay-off of Bond and CDS
As CDS is more liquid than cash bonds, and as market participants can take similar exposure to hold bond using this financial contracts, CDS is used for various purposes. It can be used to hedge ones’ position on credit exposure, and used to structure synthetic credit products such as Credit Linked Notes (CLNs) or synthetic Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDO). Of course, as its superior liquidity to real bonds especially when market liquidity dried up, CDS was key products to hedge existing positions or take risky exposure when subprime crisis arose in 2007. CDS indices such as CDX or iTraxx, as composites of number of CDS levels, are frequently used to hedge or express views on credit market my many managers who invest in credit portfolios. Therefore, a reference entity’s CDS level is one of key reference for valuation of new issued bonds with other comparable bonds’ spreads and can be used to find relative value of existing bonds being traded in secondary market, reflecting the companies’ debt financing costs and also investors’ general perception on the company’s default risks.
Himme and Fischer (2013) tried to analyze the brand equities’ impact on the cost of capital, including studies of debt financing costs. However, by clustering the bonds with credit ratings, and by using the average spreads to US treasuries of same credit ratings basket, they just studied about the relationship between the brand value and credit ratings, not the company specific debt financing costs.
The credit spread for a rating class is calculated as the difference between the average yield (10-year maturity) of a bond portfolio including only bonds of that rating class and the yield of a risk-free bond (10-year US Treasury bond).- Himme and Fischer (2013)
Due to its
liquidity and comparability using most liquid 5 year CDS levels, I believe CDS
is more proper financial product to understand the impact of brand value on
debt financing costs, and also the market participants’ perception on the company
specific default risks.
[1] For CDS transactions, Credit Event is usually pre-defined by two involved counterparties, and usually stricter than those of bonds.