Fitch rates General Mills notes BBB+

Fitch Ratings said it assigned a BBB+ rating to General Mills, Inc.'s $700 million senior unsecured notes due Sept. 10, 2012.

The company's issuer default rating, senior unsecured debt, senior unsecured credit facilities and senior unsecured convertible notes are all rated BBB+, and its short-term issuer default rating is F2.

The outlook is negative.

The company intends to use the net proceeds to repay a portion of its outstanding commercial paper.

The agency said the negative outlook reflects General Mills' higher leverage and weaker credit measures due to incremental debt from the $849 million repurchase of its series B-1 securities earlier in August. Pro forma for the repurchase, the company's total debt is estimated at $7.4 billion, and the total debt-to-operating EBITDA ratio increased to about 2.9 times from 2.7 times for the fiscal year ended May 27.

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.