Fitch lowers Nitrogenmuvek, rates bond

Fitch Ratings said it downgraded Nitrogenmuvek Zrt's long-term foreign-currency issuer default rating to B from B+.

The outlook is stable.

The agency also affirmed the company’s $200 million 2020 bond senior unsecured rating at B+ and revised the recovery rating to RR3 from RR4.

In addition, Fitch assigned an expected senior unsecured rating of B+(EXP) with a recovery rating of RR3 to the proposed €200 million bond, which will be used to refinance the existing $200 million bonds.

Fitch said the downgrade reflects Nitrogenmuvek's persistent high leverage in fiscal year 2017, despite the increase in volumes and the finalization of the investment program that has been taking place since 2014.

Fiscal year 2017 funds from operations (FFO) net adjusted leverage (net leverage) was 5.8 times versus the agency’s previous forecast of 4 times.

“The downgrade also reflects Fitch's expectation that the company will face a prolonged de-levering period back within guidelines from its current peak leverage, with net leverage expected to stay over 2.5x by 2019-2020, due to volume growth being offset by continued weak pricing, a scheduled outage during 2019, and high gas costs in Europe,” the agency said in a news release.

© 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.