S&P: TNS unaffected

Standard & Poor's said its ratings and outlook on TNS Inc. (BB-/stable/--) would not be affected by the company's recently announced tender offer to purchase up to 9 million shares, or about 32%, of its outstanding stock.

The purchase price will not be less than $18.00 or greater than $18.50 per share, for a total purchase price of up to $166.5 million, if fully tendered.

The tender offer will be conditioned upon the closing of a $240 million credit facility (the final size of facility will be dictated by the number of shares tendered), for which TNS has obtained a commitment letter from General Electric Capital Corp. This facility will fund the share repurchase, as well as refinance existing debt.

S&P said that although this transaction would increase TNS' operating lease-adjusted debt leverage to as high as 3.7x from 1.2x as of December 2004, the company's strong financial profile provided capacity for increased debt at the current rating. Furthermore, given TNS' free operating cash flow generation capabilities, demonstrated over the past few years, S&P said it expects the company to continue to generate cash and pay down debt over the intermediate term.

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