Roper Industries to keep leverage ratio in line with investment-grade rating, CEO says

By Jennifer Lanning Drey

Portland, Ore., June 23 - Roper Industries, Inc. will keep its leverage at a ratio of about 2.75 times to 3.0 times EBITDA in order to ensure that the company maintains its investment-grade ratings, Brian Jellison, chief executive officer of Roper, said Wednesday.

"We've had a purposeful strategy over five years to get to be investment grade, which we are, and I wouldn't give that up," Jellison said during a presentation at the Deutsche Bank Industrials Conference.

As the company looks to grow through additional acquisitions, it could temporarily increase its leverage, but would quickly work to bring the ratio back down, he said.

"If you bounced out of that for a little while and went to 3.5 times or something, that would be very short because you'd want to use all of your cash to get right back into the completely safe investment-grade status," Jellison said.

With a focus on cash generation, Roper has generated $1.4 billion of operating cash flow over the past four years.

The company is projecting operating cash flow of at least $400 million to $425 million for full-year 2010.

Roper had $891 million of cash and available liquidity at March 31.

Roper is a Sarasota, Fla.-based provider of engineered products for niche markets, including water, energy, radio frequency and research/medical applications.

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