The coming implosion of retail - what will it take down with it?

[Jonathan Twombly]

Bloomberg has a very interesting article about how retail is on the verge of imploding - not because, as we usually hear, of Amazon, though Amazon doesn't help.  It's because so many chains have been purchased by private equity firms in recent years, and PE firms have overloaded them with debt.  This will take down some healthy chains too, Bloomberg argues.

What I immediately noticed was where the debt-laden chain stores are.  They line up very nicely with the MSAs where a lot of investors are now flocking because they feature high cap rates, even though those MSAs feature declining populations and other bad fundamentals.  This article makes the fundamentals seem even worse.

What are your thoughts?

Here's the article:  https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2017-retail-debt/