Moody's affirms International Paper

Moody's Investors Service said it affirmed International Paper Co.'s Baa3 senior unsecured debt ratings and Prime-3 commercial paper ratings and revised the outlook to negative from stable following the company's announcement that it had entered into a definitive purchase agreement to acquire Weyerhaeuser Co.'s containerboard, packaging and recycling operations.

The agency said that the purchase price is $6.0 billion and International Paper proposes to fund the transaction entirely with debt.

Moody's noted that the proposed acquisition is expected to magnify International Paper's existing ratings' strengths and challenges, with already strong aggregate-scale increasing even further and margin stability benefiting from the increased proportion of packaging paper in the product mix.

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