{"id":25257,"date":"2014-05-14T21:45:30","date_gmt":"2014-05-15T02:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=25257"},"modified":"2014-05-14T21:45:30","modified_gmt":"2014-05-15T02:45:30","slug":"ema-trend-now-stable-says-sp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=25257","title":{"rendered":"EMA: Trend Now Stable, Says S&amp;P"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.standardandpoors.com\/prot\/ratings\/articles\/en\/ap?articleType=HTML&#038;assetID=1245368365911\">has announced<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2022We are revising our outlook on Emera Inc. to stable from negative.\n<li>\u2022The outlook revision reflects our assessment of progress on Emera&#8217;s Maritime Link project and our view that the company&#8217;s financial metrics are likely to remain in the &#8220;significant&#8221; category over the next two-to-three years.\n<li>\u2022We have also affirmed our ratings, including our &#8216;BBB+&#8217; long-term corporate credit ratings, on Emera and subsidiary Nova Scotia Power Inc.<\/ul>\n<p><b>&#8230;<\/b><br \/>&#8220;The outlook revision reflects our view of the progress Emera has made on the Maritime Link project, including regulatory approvals and issuance of debt guaranteed by the Government of Canada,&#8221; said Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s credit analyst Stephen Goltz. The revision also reflects our view that Emera&#8217;s financial metrics are likely to remain in the &#8220;significant&#8221; category over the next two-to-three years.<\/p>\n<p>The ratings on Emera reflect what Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s views as the company&#8217;s &#8220;excellent&#8221; business risk profile and significant financial risk profile.<br \/><b>&#8230;<\/b><br \/>Emera&#8217;s significant financial risk profile reflects what we view as the stability and predictability of the company&#8217;s regulated cash flow. We project Emera&#8217;s adjusted funds from operations (AFFO)-to-debt ratio to range from 12%-13% in the next two years. We have added to the company&#8217;s consolidated debt C$250 million and C$600 million of debt for 2014 and 2015, respectively, for the Maritime Link project, reflecting the project&#8217;s importance to Emera and our view that the company would support the project if required.<\/p>\n<p>The stable outlook reflects our view of Emera&#8217;s stable and predictable cash flows, which the company&#8217;s regulated operations in generally supportive regulatory environments underpin. We expect Emera&#8217;s FFO-to-debt ratio to range from 12%-13% in the next two years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Emera has three issues of preferred shares outstanding, EMA.PR.A, EMA.PR.C (FixedResets) and EMA.PR.E (PerpetualDiscount). All are tracked by HIMIPref&trade;; all are relegated to the Scraps index on credit concerns. S&#038;P continues to rate the issues P-2(low); they are rated Pfd-3(high), under Review-Developing by DBRS as <a href=\"http:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=22897\">reported on PrefBlog in August 2013<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s has announced: \u2022We are revising our outlook on Emera Inc. to stable from negative. \u2022The outlook revision reflects our assessment of progress on Emera&#8217;s Maritime Link project and our view that the &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-25257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-comments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25257","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=25257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}