S&P puts Albemarle on positive watch

S&P said it placed all its Albemarle Corp. ratings, including its BBB- issuer rating, on CreditWatch with positive implications.

The CreditWatch positive placement follows the company’s announcement that it plans to sell $1.3 billion in shares and use the proceeds for a mix of debt reduction, growth initiatives and general corporate purposes, the agency said.

“We believe that if the company uses a majority of the proceeds to reduce debt, that would lead to a material improvement in credit measures, which could warrant a higher rating. Specifically, in our current upside scenario we state that we could raise the ratings if we expected weighted-average funds from operations (FFO) to debt were to remain solidly in the 20%-30% range,” S&P said in a press release.

The agency said it aims to resolve the CreditWatch in the next few months after learning how much debt and which tranches of debt will be repaid.

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