After reaching the highest level in five months, leveraged loan amend-and-extend activity in January cooled to $770 million via just two transactions, from $9.6 billion in December, according to LCD. In January 2021, amend-and-extend volume topped $6 billion, illustrating just how slow of a start it has been for this year.
As mentioned, January's amend-and-extend activity consisted of just two transactions, a $500 million revolver for Calumet Specialty Products Partners LP that was extended to January 2027, from February 2023, and a $270 million revolver and term loan A for Vectrus Inc. that was extended to November 2023, from November 2022. Looking back, pro rata deals represented the lion's share of extension activity in 2021, accounting for about $79.8 billion of the $104.8 billion of extension volume. Pro rata debt typically entails amortizing term loan A and/or revolving credit facilities.
Turning to upcoming maturities, the volume of loans due in 2022-2024 fell by $5.4 billion between the end of December and the end of January, to $171.6 billion, against a backdrop of about $1.3 trillion in outstanding loan paper. The volume of loans coming due in 2022-2024 was about $220.2 billion less at the end of January than it was at the end of 2020. Meanwhile, the volume of loans coming due in 2025-2026 shrank by $91.3 billion between the end of 2020 and the end of January, while the par amount outstanding due 2027 or later grew by $481.5 billion.
Like extensions, covenant-relief activity also declined, to three transactions in January, from December's four. Overall, covenant-relief activity in 2021 was down significantly from 2020, when companies scrambled for flexibility at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, with just 30 covenant-relief transactions, versus 193 during 2020. Moreover, in terms of volume, covenant-relief activity in 2021 was the lowest in more than a decade.
And like amend-and-extend activity, all of January’s covenant-relief transactions were among borrowers with pro rata loan packages. Those names included Blackbaud Inc., National CineMedia Inc. and Plantronics Inc. Of course, one of the fundamental differences in the covenant-relief landscape today is that most current covenant-relief deals are pro rata, comprising revolving credits and amortizing term debt taken on by banks and financial institutions. A decade ago, covenant-relief activity tilted toward institutional issuers, whose debt is primarily bought by CLOs, retail/mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.
In 2010, the volume of institutional and pro rata covenant-relief activity was about $70 billion and $34.2 billion. Fast forward to a decade later, in 2020, and institutional deals accounted for just $19.9 billion of the $161.4 billion in covenant-relief volume, according to LCD. In 2021, the difference was even more striking, with institutional covenant-relief volume coming in at $2 billion, versus pro rata's $18.3 billion.
Meanwhile, the covenant-lite market share within the S&P/LSTA Leveraged Loan Index continues to reach new heights, inching up to 87.6% in January, from 87.3% in December. For reference, at the end of 2008, before the peak of covenant amendment activity during the last financial crisis, the covenant-lite share was just 15%.
