Moody's rates Kilitwo CFR, notes B2

Moody's Investors Service said it assigned a B2 corporate family rating and a B1-PD probability of default rating to Kilitwo SAS, the parent company of the Kerneos group and topco of the restricted group.

Concurrently, the agency assigned a provisional B2 rating to the proposed €335 million senior secured guaranteed notes to be issued by Kerneos Tech Group SAS, a wholly owned subsidiary of Kilitwo (in turn a wholly owned subsidiary of Kilione SAS).

The outlook is positive.

Moody's said that among other factors, the B2 corporate family rating is supported by (a) Kerneos' very strong market shares in the otherwise fragmented and niche Calcium Aluminates Cement (CAC) market for the refractory and building chemistry industry; and (b) the high barriers to entry to the CAC market as a result of the capital intensity of the production process combined with a relatively limited size of the overall CAC market, the need for a dense production network (slightly less of a key competitive advantage than for the production of Portland cement where weight/value ratio is much lower than for CAC), the difficulty to get access to certain key raw materials and the need to establish long term relationship with clients.

© 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.