{"id":17919,"date":"2012-02-22T21:42:43","date_gmt":"2012-02-23T01:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prefblog.com\/?p=17919"},"modified":"2012-02-22T21:42:43","modified_gmt":"2012-02-23T01:42:43","slug":"fts-on-creditwatch-negative-by-sp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=17919","title":{"rendered":"FTS on CreditWatch Negative by S&amp;P"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.standardandpoors.com\/prot\/ratings\/articles\/en\/us\/?articleType=HTML&#038;assetID=1245329225891\">has announced<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>On Feb. 21, 2012, Fortis Inc. announced it entered into an agreement to acquire all of the shares of CH Energy Group Inc. for about C$1.5 billion.\n<li>As a result, we are placing our ratings, including our &#8216;A-&#8216; long-term corporate credit rating, on Fortis Inc. on CreditWatch with negative implications.\n<li>The CreditWatch reflects our expectation of increased debt at the holding company level to finance the acquisition and that post-acquisition, deconsolidated credit metrics may be below our established thresholds.<\/ul>\n<p><b>&#8230;<\/b><br \/>\n&#8220;We will resolve the CreditWatch once greater details related to the transaction become available, including a financing plan, and the transaction closes,&#8221; said Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s credit analyst Gavin MacFarlane. We could lower the ratings if debt levels increase as a result of the transaction and the company is unable to meet established thresholds we associate with the current ratings, including company-level debt coverage from cash flows from its subsidiaries of more than 20% and consolidated adjusted funds from operations to debt of more than 10%. However, while less likely, we could still affirm the ratings on Fortis and return to a stable outlook if a very meaningful component of the financing plan consists of equity and we conclude<br \/>\nthat forecast credit metrics are at levels consistent with the current ratings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Fortis&#8217; preferreds are currently rated P-2 [Watch Negative] by S&#038;P and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dbrs.com\/research\/245487\/dbrs-places-fortis-inc-under-review-with-developing-implications-following-ch-energy-group-inc-acquisition-announcement.html\">Pfd-2(low) [Review Developing] by DBRS<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Fortis has several series of preferred shares outstanding: FTS.PR.C &#038; FTS.PR.E (Operating Retractible); FTS.PR.F (PerpetualPremium); FTS.PR.G &#038; FTS.PR.H (FixedReset). All are tracked by HIMIPref&trade; and assigned to the indicated indices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s has announced: On Feb. 21, 2012, Fortis Inc. announced it entered into an agreement to acquire all of the shares of CH Energy Group Inc. for about C$1.5 billion. As a result, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-comments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}