S&P Global Ratings affirmed Frontier Communications Corp.'s ratings, including the B- corporate credit rating, and removed them from CreditWatch where they were placed with negative implications.
Concurrently, the rating agency assigned a B+ issue-level rating to Frontier Communications' proposed $1.6 billion of senior secured second-lien notes due 2026.
S&P expects the company's operating and financial performance will remain weak in 2018. The agency, however, thinks the company's operations in the California, Texas and Florida markets will improve throughout the year.
The outlook on the company is negative, reflecting the potential for a downgrade over the next 12 months if further execution missteps pressure EBITDA and free operating cash flow or the company "underperforms our current base case forecast, which could result in rising leverage and render the capital structure as unsustainable," said S&P.
This S&P Global Market Intelligence news article may contain information about credit ratings issued by S&P Global Ratings, a separately managed division of S&P Global. Descriptions in this news article were not prepared by S&P Global Ratings. The original S&P Global Ratings documents referred to in this news brief can be found here.
