Moody's rates Midwest Veterinary loan B3

Moody's Investors Service said it assigned a B3 rating to Midwest Veterinary Partners, LLC’s (Mission Veterinary Partners) planned $225 million senior secured first-lien delayed-draw term loan and downgraded the company’s first-lien bank debt and credit facility ratings to B3 from B2, following planned upsizing of the first- lien term loan by $250 million.

The downgrade reflects that the company's capital structure will become more heavily comprised of first-lien debt, which will weaken the stress scenario recovery prospect of this debt class, the agency said.

Moody’s also changed the outlook to negative from stable but affirmed the company's B3 corporate family rating and B3-PD probability of default rating.

"The negative outlook reflects Moody's expectation for MVP's financial policies to remain more aggressive than initially anticipated, with meaningful increase in debt and interest burden as MVP continues to use debt to fund acquisitions. This, coupled with material growth in estimates for adjustments and add-backs to EBITDA, has increased the degree of uncertainty around the true underlying cash generating ability of the company," said Vladimir Ronin, Moody's lead analyst for the company, in a press release.

"Nonetheless, Moody's expects MVP to successfully integrate its numerous recent acquisitions, which along with favorable long-term trends in the pet care sector will support improvement in profitability and credit metrics over the next 12-18 months," added Ronin.

© 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.