{"id":24317,"date":"2014-01-28T18:42:06","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T23:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=24317"},"modified":"2014-01-28T18:42:06","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T23:42:06","slug":"sjr-pr-a-credit-outlook-positive-says-sp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=24317","title":{"rendered":"SJR.PR.A: Credit Outlook Positive, says 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=1245363450553\">has announced<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2022Calgary-based Shaw Communications Inc. has notably improved its credit ratios in the last few quarters.\n<li>\u2022We are affirming our &#8216;BBB-&#8216; corporate credit rating on Shaw and revising the outlook to positive from stable.\n<li>\u2022The positive outlook reflects the potential of an upgrade in the next 12-18 months should the company demonstrate its commitment to managing adjusted debt to EBITDA at the mid-2x area and its operating performance is consistent with our base-case scenario.<\/ul>\n<p><b>&#8230;<\/b><br \/>Shaw&#8217;s subscription-based cable operations are the primary driver for the ratings given that this segment generates the majority of the company&#8217;s revenue, operating income, and cash flow and offers good asset protection to creditors, in our opinion. Shaw&#8217;s business risk profile is also supported by our assessment of the company&#8217;s management and governance as satisfactory.<\/p>\n<p>Tempering factors, in our view, include rising competitive risks; video subscriber losses owing to the more ubiquitous triple- and quad-play offerings from well-capitalized telecom rivals and cord cutting; rising regulatory risk as regulators look for ways to unbundle video distribution (we estimate that Shaw has about 50% overall revenue exposure to video); potential for margin pressure stemming from a declining subscriber base and ongoing retention efforts; slowing overall revenue growth given a mature addressable market; the company&#8217;s historically acquisitive growth strategy; and the high capital expenditures, in general, needed to sustain competitiveness and maintain service differentiation.<br \/><b>&#8230;<\/b><br \/>The positive outlook reflects the potential of an upgrade in the next 12-18<br \/>\nmonths should the company demonstrate its commitment to managing adjusted debt to EBITDA at the mid-2x area and operating performance is consistent with our base-case scenario.<\/p>\n<p>We could revise our outlook to stable should higher competition (likely from Telus) materially affect profitability or if substantive debt-funded shareholder distributions or acquisitions cause Shaw&#8217;s adjusted debt-to-EBITDA ratio to increase to the 3x area for a prolonged period.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>SJR.PR.A commenced trading at the <a href=\"http:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=15212\">end of May, 2011<\/a>. It is tracked by HIMIPref&trade; but relegated to the Scraps index on credit concerns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s has announced: \u2022Calgary-based Shaw Communications Inc. has notably improved its credit ratios in the last few quarters. \u2022We are affirming our &#8216;BBB-&#8216; corporate credit rating on Shaw and revising the outlook to &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-24317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-comments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24317","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=24317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}