{"id":50099,"date":"2019-03-27T21:14:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-28T01:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=50099"},"modified":"2025-09-19T21:14:42","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T01:14:42","slug":"azp-now-outlook-positive-says-sp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/?p=50099","title":{"rendered":"AZP Now Outlook-Positive, Says S&#038;P"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.standardandpoors.com\/en_US\/web\/guest\/article\/-\/view\/type\/HTML\/id\/2187167\">has announced<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<ul>\n<li>\u2022Atlantic Power Corp.&#8217;s (APC) leverage improved in 2018 and we believe the Boston-based publicly traded power generation company&#8217;s deleveraging trend is likely to continue, supported by the predictability of cash flows from power purchase agreements (PPAs) in the portfolio.\n<li>\u2022We expect APC to complete the acquisition of two biomass projects in South Carolina with long-term PPAs during the second half of 2019, which will help mitigate some recontracting risk.\n<li>\u2022S&#038;P Global Ratings is affirming our &#8216;B+&#8217; issuer credit rating, our &#8216;BB-&#8216; issue-level rating on APC&#8217;s senior term loan B, senior revolving credit facility, and medium-term notes, and our &#8216;CCC+&#8217; issue-level rating on the preferred shares.\n<li>\u2022Our &#8216;2&#8217; recovery rating on all debt tranches is unchanged, indicating our expectation for substantial recovery (70%-90%; rounded estimate: 80%) in the event of a default.\n<li>\u2022The positive outlook reflects a possibility that we could upgrade APC by one notch because we believe the company can achieve our adjusted debt to EBITDA of below 5x in the next 12 months.<\/ul>\n<p><b>&#8230;<\/b><br \/>If APC meets our adjusted debt-to-EBITDA projection of below 5x, it would likely be supported by deleveraging through excess cash flow sweep on the term loan B in line with management&#8217;s guidance and by demonstrating its ability to continue extending expiring PPAs. The rating could also improve if the company continues to pursue growth opportunities while maintaining S&#038;P Global Ratings&#8217; adjusted leverage.<\/p>\n<p>We could revise the outlook back to stable if our adjusted debt to EBITDA indicates an increasing trend above 5x on a sustained basis. This may be due to the inability to recontract expiring or obtain new PPAs, aggressive growth strategy through incremental debt issuances, or higher-than-expected operating costs to maintain power assets in the portfolio, creating volatility in cash flows available for debt service.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Affected issues are AZP.PR.A, AZP.PR.B and AZP.PR.C.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Standard &#038; Poor&#8217;s has announced: \u2022Atlantic Power Corp.&#8217;s (APC) leverage improved in 2018 and we believe the Boston-based publicly traded power generation company&#8217;s deleveraging trend is likely to continue, supported by the predictability of cash &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-50099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-comments"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50099","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=50099"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50100,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50099\/revisions\/50100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prefblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}