S&P cuts Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield

S&P said it downgraded the ratings on Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and its unsecured bonds to A- from A and the rating on the junior bonds to BBB from BBB+.

The closure of all non-essential retail by government decree in many of the countries where the company operates along with social distancing to counter the spread of the coronavirus are highly likely to hurt retailers, the agency said.

“Because these measures will jeopardize retailers' ability to pay rents, we now anticipate a significant decline in net rental income and valuation in 2020 and only a slow recovery in 2021. Given leverage ratios were already close to our downgrade thresholds, we now believe that URW will not be able to restore credit metrics in line with our previous base case for 2020 and 2021,” said S&P in a press release.

The outlook is negative.

© 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.