Moody's elevates Coca-Cola Consolidated to Baa1

Moody's Investors Service said it upgraded Coca-Cola Consolidated, Inc.'s senior unsecured debt rating to Baa1 from Baa2.

The outlook is stable.

The upgrade reflects the company’s progress in integrating territories it acquired as part of the Coca-Cola Co.'s domestic bottler refranchising and improving operating efficiencies, Moody’s said.

“The upgrade also reflects the company's strong results in the face of a difficult year due to Covid disruptions, which affected the supply chain and closed important distribution venues,” Moody’s said in a news release.

“Despite these challenges the company improved credit metrics, reducing debt to EBITDA leverage (including Moody's adjustments) to 2.6x as of year-end 2020 down from over 4.0x in 2018. The upgrade also reflects Moody's expectation that the company will maintain these more conservative financial metrics going forward.”

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.