Fitch shifts Wind Hellas view to negative

Fitch Ratings said it revised Crystal Almond Intermediary Holdings Ltd.’s (Wind Hellas) outlook to negative from stable and affirmed the company’s long-term issuer default rating at B.

“The revision of the outlook follows Wind Hellas’ payment of a capital distribution of €225 million to its parent Crystal Almond Holdings, which increases the company’s leverage above our downgrade threshold of 4x funds from operations (FFO) adjusted net leverage in 2019. We believe that the company retains the ability to reduce leverage organically, evidenced by a strong performance in 2019, but deleveraging below the downgrade threshold could be delayed until at least until 2022-2023 due to expected 5G spectrum payments,” said Fitch in a press release.

The growth of the Greek telecoms market is still fragile and highly competitive while Wind Hellas’ free cash flow generation remains modest, turning positive in 2019 after several years of negative outflows. The use of remaining proceeds from the company’s recent refinancing to pay dividends increases net leverage and removes the cash cushion that could finance possible 5G spectrum payments in 2020-2021 and further network investment, Fitch said.

Fitch sees the company’s leverage rising to 4.3x above its downgrade threshold of 4x. Fitch believes leverage is likely to gradually fall in 2020-2023 but not quickly enough to justify a stable outlook.

© 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.