Moody's rates Dotdash Meredith, loans B1

Moody's Investors Service said it assigned Dotdash Meredith Inc. a B1 corporate family rating and B1-PD probability of default rating. Moody's also gave B1 ratings to the planned credit facilities comprising a $150 million revolver, a $350 million senior secured term loan A and a $1 billion senior secured term loan B.

Term loan proceeds of $1.35 billion of term loans together with $250 million of added debt issuance and $1.4 billion of IAC's cash will be used to acquire Meredith Corp.'s print and digital publishing assets known as Meredith's national media segment. Dotdash Meredith will become an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of IAC/InterActiveCorp.

The B1 rating considers the transitional model in which Dotdash Meredith plans to manage the print assets' revenue decline while investing to grow the digital business, which the agency projects will eventually become the bulk of combined revenue. “Ratings incorporate the competitive pricing pressures and secular decline in print advertising and subscription revenue in the legacy magazine publishing business, which accelerated during the pandemic and could experience faster-than-expected contraction going forward,” Moody’s said in a press release.

The outlook is stable.

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