• Southeast Asia’s high-yield credit has outperformed investment grade peers this year amid expected growth in the region’s economies.
• Southeast Asian junk-rated dollar corporate bonds have returned an average of 7.3% this year, according to a Bloomberg index, while high-grade debt has lost 0.3% over the same period
• That has helped push the yield on the region’s non-investment grade bonds to 7.9%, near the lowest since June 2022, which may provide relief for borrowers to refinance their maturing debt
  ** Borrowing costs for such issuers were over 10% at the end of last year