S&P boosts Las Vegas Sands

Standard & Poor's said it raised the corporate credit rating on the Las Vegas Sands Corp. family of companies to B from B-. The companies include Las Vegas Sands LLC, its Venetian Casino Resort LLC subsidiary and affiliate VML U.S. Finance LLC.

The outlook is positive. Ratings were removed from CreditWatch, where they were placed with positive implications July 28.

The agency assigned B ratings to Las Vegas Sands LLC's extended $532.5 million revolving credit facility and approximately $1.9 billion of term loans in three tranches. The recovery rating is 3.

"The rating upgrade reflects the substantial improvement to the company's debt maturity profile that results from the completion of the amend-and-extend transaction," S&P analyst Ben Bubeck said in a statement.

"Furthermore, given the easing of the leverage covenant into 2012, the company's financial flexibility and liquidity profile also improved."

The B corporate credit rating reflects significant consolidated funded debt burden, an aggressive development pipeline and the high levels of competition in the company's markets, the agency noted.

Strong operating trends, substantially improved profitability following recently completed cost-containment efforts, the potential to generate substantial cash proceeds through the sale of noncore assets and manageable debt maturities over the next few years somewhat temper these negative rating factors, the agency said.

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