{"id":33142,"date":"2016-06-02T21:54:32","date_gmt":"2016-06-03T02:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=33142"},"modified":"2016-06-02T21:54:32","modified_gmt":"2016-06-03T02:54:32","slug":"ron-pr-a-ron-pr-b-sp-rates-p-2low","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=33142","title":{"rendered":"RON.PR.A, RON.PR.B : S&amp;P Rates P-2(low)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.standardandpoors.com\/en_US\/web\/guest\/article\/-\/view\/type\/HTML\/id\/1648113\">has announced<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2022Mooresville, N.C.-based home improvement retailer Lowe&#8217;s Cos. Inc. has completed its previously announced acquisition of Quebec-based RONA Inc. for about C$3.2 billion.\n<li>\u2022As a result, we are raising our long-term corporate credit rating on RONA to &#8216;BBB+&#8217; from &#8216;BB+&#8217; and removing the company from CreditWatch, where we had placed it with positive implications Feb. 3, 2016. The outlook is stable.\n<li>\u2022At the same time, we are raising our issue-level rating on RONA&#8217;s senior unsecured notes to &#8216;BBB+&#8217; from &#8216;BB+&#8217; and our rating on its preferred shares to &#8216;BBB-&#8216; from &#8216;B+&#8217;.<\/ul>\n<p><b>&#8230;<\/b><br \/>&#8220;In our opinion, RONA&#8217;s operations are important to Lowe&#8217;s long-term growth strategy,&#8221; said S&#038;P Global Ratings credit analyst Alessio Di Francesco. As such, we believe Lowe&#8217;s is unlikely to sell RONA and we expect that Lowe&#8217;s would likely provide additional liquidity, capital, or risk transfer in most foreseeable circumstances. We believe the 496 stores and nine distribution centers Lowe&#8217;s acquired from RONA should improve the competitive position of its Canadian business by increasing its scale and effectively taking out a competitor. Prior to completing this acquisition, Lowe&#8217;s had only 42 stores in Canada. Furthermore, RONA offers Lowe&#8217;s an important entry into Quebec (almost 25% of the Canadian home improvement market) where Lowe&#8217;s previously had no presence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>RON.PR.A and RON.PR.B were last mentioned on PrefBlog when the <a href=\"http:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=33044\">effective date of the Plan of Arrangement was announced<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>DBRS has not yet resolved its Review-Positive of RONA, which was announced when <a href=\"http:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=32252\">the plan of arrangement was proposed<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s has announced: \u2022Mooresville, N.C.-based home improvement retailer Lowe&#8217;s Cos. Inc. has completed its previously announced acquisition of Quebec-based RONA Inc. for about C$3.2 billion. \u2022As a result, we are raising our long-term &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-33142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-comments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33142","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=33142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}