{"id":23569,"date":"2013-11-04T21:24:44","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T01:24:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prefblog.com\/?p=23569"},"modified":"2013-11-04T21:24:44","modified_gmt":"2013-11-05T01:24:44","slug":"w-downgraded-to-p-3high-by-sp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=23569","title":{"rendered":"W Downgraded to P-3(high) 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=1245359485517\">has announced<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>We are lowering our ratings on Westcoast Energy Inc., including our long-term corporate credit rating to &#8216;BBB&#8217; from &#8216;BBB+&#8217;.\n<li>We are also removing the ratings from CreditWatch, where they were placed with negative implications June 17, 2013.\n<li>The ratings on Westcoast reflect those on parent Spectra Energy Corp.\n<li>We downgraded Spectra to &#8216;BBB&#8217; from &#8216;BBB+&#8217; today, reflecting the drop-down of assets to subsidiary Spectra Energy Partners L.P.<\/ul>\n<p><b>&#8230;<\/b><br \/>The ratings on Westcoast primarily reflect Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s view of parent company Spectra, as well as Westcoast&#8217;s &#8220;strong&#8221; business risk profile and &#8220;significant&#8221; financial risk profile. Furthermore, the credit profiles of both companies are very similar, in our view. Westcoast has what we believe is a diverse group of gas infrastructure assets that have a broad customer base, generate mostly fee-based revenue that reinforces stability, and benefit from regulatory protection to various degrees &#8212; all of which also support the strong business risk profile.<\/p>\n<p>We have equalized our ratings on Westcoast with those on parent Spectra. We link the parent and operating company&#8217;s credit profiles based on our methodology for holding company structures. Accordingly, any rating action on Spectra would likely flow through to our ratings on Westcoast.<\/p>\n<p>The stable outlook on Westcoast reflects that on Spectra.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The previous CreditWatch-Negative was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prefblog.com\/?p=22322\">reported on PrefBlog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Westcoast is the proud issuer of two series of preferred shares, W.PR.H and W.PR.J, both Straight Perpetuals. Both are tracked by HIMIPref&trade; and both are currently assigned to the PerpetualDiscount subindex; both will be relegated to &#8220;Scraps&#8221; at the next index rebalancing at the end of November.<\/p>\n<p>Interestingly, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.standardandpoors.com\/prot\/ratings\/articles\/en\/us\/?articleType=HTML&#038;assetID=1245359485725\">S&#038;P affirmed UNG<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>We are affirming our ratings, including our &#8216;BBB+&#8217; long-term corporate credit rating, on Union Gas Ltd.\n<li>We are also removing the ratings from CreditWatch, where they were placed June 17, 2013.\n<li>The rating action follows our downgrade to Spectra Energy Corp. to &#8216;BBB&#8217; from &#8216;BBB+&#8217; after the drop-down of assets to subsidiary Spectra Energy Partners L.P.\n<li>Based on our &#8216;a-&#8216; stand-alone credit profile at Union Gas, the &#8216;BBB&#8217; rating on Spectra Energy Corp., and our assessment of the regulatory insulation from the parent, we believe that a one-notch differential between the ratings on the parent and that on Union Gas is warranted.<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Union Gas is the proud issuer of two preferred shares: UNG.PR.C and UNG.PR.D, which have been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prefblog.com\/?p=9377\">discussed in passing<\/a> on PrefBlog, but neither is tracked by HIMIPref&trade;. The commencement of CreditWatch-Negative status for UNG was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prefblog.com\/?p=22266\">reported on PrefBlog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s has announced: We are lowering our ratings on Westcoast Energy Inc., including our long-term corporate credit rating to &#8216;BBB&#8217; from &#8216;BBB+&#8217;. We are also removing the ratings from CreditWatch, where they were &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-23569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-comments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23569","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=23569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}