S&P rates Formula One B+

Standard & Poor's said it assigned a preliminary B+ long-term corporate credit rating to Formula One (Alpha Topco Ltd.), the Formula One World Championship (F1) organizer and owner of the commercial rights to F1 motorsports racing.

The outlook is stable.

The rating is mainly constrained by the group's highly leveraged financial risk profile, S&P said.

As part of the proposed refinancing, $4 billion of shareholder loans are at the holding company, Delta Topco level, the agency said.

S&P said it considers these to be debt-like obligations and believes the group is unlikely to deleverage substantially over the next two to three years, despite a cash flow sweep mechanism/

These factors are partly mitigated by Formula One's business risk profile, which is considered to be satisfactory, the agency said.

Underpinning the ratings is the group's high contract backlog of more than $7 billion, which provides some visibility and stability to the proposed capital structure, S&P said.

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