{"id":26410,"date":"2014-09-30T18:16:15","date_gmt":"2014-09-30T23:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=26410"},"modified":"2014-09-30T18:16:15","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T23:16:15","slug":"sp-affirms-bpo-credit-watch-removed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=26410","title":{"rendered":"S&amp;P Affirms BPO, Credit-Watch Removed"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Standard and Poor&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.standardandpoors.com\/prot\/ratings\/articles\/en\/us?articleType=HTML&#038;assetID=1245375370341\">has announced<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2022Brookfield Property Partners L.P. completed its acquisition of former affiliate and large office landlord Brookfield Office Properties Inc.\n<li>\u2022Operating fundamentals have improved for office landlords as the U.S. economy has recovered, employment has strengthened, and new office supply additions have been muted.\n<li>\u2022We are affirming our &#8216;BBB-&#8216; corporate credit rating on Brookfield Office and removing all ratings from CreditWatch with developing implications. The outlook is stable.\n<li>\u2022The stable outlook reflects our view that the company&#8217;s competitively positioned office portfolio, with improving occupancy, good quality tenants, and below market rents will support leverage and fixed-charge coverage at current levels.<\/ul>\n<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s Ratings Services today affirmed its &#8216;BBB-&#8216; corporate credit rating on Brookfield Office Properties Inc. (Brookfield Office), &#8216;BB+&#8217; rating on the company&#8217;s unsecured debt, and &#8216;BB&#8217; rating on its preferred stock. We removed all ratings on the company from CreditWatch, where we placed them with developing implications on Oct. 4, 2013. These actions affect roughly $1.7 billion of rated corporate debt and preferred securities.<br \/><b>&#8230;<\/b><br \/>We would lower ratings if leverage rises to 60%, fixed-charge coverage measures deteriorate to the 1.3x level, or the common dividend is not adequately supported by operations, since these measures would be more  reflective of an &#8220;aggressive&#8221; financial risk profile. An increase in speculative development activity would also pressure ratings.<\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t see potential for upgrade momentum over the next few years despite the company&#8217;s &#8220;strong&#8221; business risk profile until the financial risk profile is more firmly positioned within the &#8220;significant&#8221; category. Specifically, we would look for fixed-charge coverage measures above 1.7x, debt to EBITDA of less than 10x, and stronger coverage of the common dividend. The prudent pursuit and financing of the company&#8217;s expanding development pipeline would also be an important consideration for ratings improvement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The &#8220;Watch &#8211; Developing&#8221; status was <a href=\"http:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=23278\">previously reported on PrefBlog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The ultimate parent, Brookfield Asset Management, has the following preferred shares outstanding:<br \/>\n FixedResets BAM.PF.A, BAM.PF.B, BAM.PF.E, BAM.PF.F, BAM.PR.R, BAM.PR.T, BAM.PR.X, BAM.PR.Z<br \/>\n Floaters BAM.PR.B, BAM.PR.C, BAM.PR.K<br \/>\n RatchetRate BAM.PR.E<br \/>\n FixedFloater BAM.PR.G<br \/>\n OperatingRetractible BAM.PR.J<br \/>\n Straight Perpetual BAM.PR.M, BAM.PR.N, BAM.PF.C, BAM.PF.D<\/p>\n<p>BPO has the following preferred share issues outstanding:<br \/>\n OperatingRetractible BPO.PR.H, BPO.PR.J, BPO.PR.K,<br \/>\n FixedReset BPO.PR.L, BPO.PR.N, BPO.PR.P, BPO.PR.R, BPO.PR.T,<br \/>\n Floaters BPO.PR.W, BPO.PR.X, BPO.PR.Y<\/p>\n<p>In addition, there are the following <a href=\"http:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=25563\">split shares dependent upon BPO<\/a>:<br \/>\nBPS.PR.U, BPS.PR.A, BPS.PR.B and BPS.PR.C<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Standard and Poor&#8217;s has announced: \u2022Brookfield Property Partners L.P. completed its acquisition of former affiliate and large office landlord Brookfield Office Properties Inc. \u2022Operating fundamentals have improved for office landlords as the U.S. economy has &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-26410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-comments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26410","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=26410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26410\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}