PrefBlog

DBRS has announced that it:

has today downgraded the Issuer Rating and the Senior Unsecured Debt & Medium-Term Notes of Atlantic Power Limited Partnership (APLP) to B (high) from BB, and the rating of Atlantic Power Preferred Equity Ltd.’s Cumulative Preferred Shares to Pfd-5 (high) from Pfd-4. The trends on all ratings are now Negative. The ratings of APLP are based on the credit quality of Atlantic Power Corporation (ATP or the Company; not rated by DBRS) given that APLP guarantees the majority of ATP’s debt at the holding company level (22% of consolidated debt as at June 30, 2013).
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The Negative trend reflects DBRS’s view that the Company’s key ratios could weaken further as a meaningful recovery of the wholesale power market will be challenging. The wholesale electricity market outlook remains weak and creates uncertainties associated with the renewal of certain long-term contracts, such as Selkirk (expires in August 2014), Tunis (December 2014) and Greeley (August 2013). In the absence of business environment improvement, ATP will likely have to execute a combination of the following to improve its financial profile: (1) capital and operating expense spending curtailment, (2) dividend reduction and (3) further asset sales. If ATP is successful in implementing a sustainable recovery, which would be largely influenced by the timing of the electricity price recovery, DBRS could consider changing the trend to Stable. However, should ongoing weak business fundamentals remain and key financial metrics deteriorate further, DBRS will likely take a further negative rating action.

These issues were recently downgraded to P-5 by S&P.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 19th, 2013 at 11:19 pm and is filed under Issue Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.