S&P: Gruppo Espresso view stable

Standard & Poor's said it revised the outlook on Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso SpA to stable from negative and affirmed its BB long-term corporate credit and senior unsecured debt ratings.

The recovery rating on Gruppo Espresso's senior unsecured debt is unchanged at 4.

"The outlook revision reflects our view of the significant improvement in Gruppo Espresso's operating performance over the past two quarters," S&P analyst Patrizia D'Amico said in a statement.

"This performance should, in our opinion, result in profitability and credit measures commensurate with the current ratings by year-end 2010. In particular, we believe that the group's adjusted net debt to EBITDA is likely to fall comfortably below 4.0x at year-end 2010, compared with 4.9x at the end of 2009."

Ratings reflect the company's relative concentration of earnings from a single business franchise, although this covers a range of products, and the fact that the group competes for advertising revenues with Italy's highly concentrated TV broadcasting industry, the agency said.

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