{"id":15304,"date":"2012-10-05T17:33:10","date_gmt":"2012-10-05T15:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/10\/text-sp-report-says-outlook-for-emea-forest-products-cos-is-stable\/"},"modified":"2012-10-05T17:33:10","modified_gmt":"2012-10-05T15:33:10","slug":"text-sp-report-says-outlook-for-emea-forest-products-cos-is-stable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/text-sp-report-says-outlook-for-emea-forest-products-cos-is-stable\/","title":{"rendered":"TEXT-S&P report says outlook for EMEA forest products cos is stable"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Oct 05 – In a report published today, titled “Outlook Stable For European Forest Products
\nCompanies, Despite Soft Paper Markets And Economic Headwinds”, Standard Poor’s Ratings
\nServices said that it anticipates broadly stable credit trends this year for the 10 forest
\nproducts companies it rates in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. This is
\ndespite challenging market conditions in Europe for graphic paper and wood
\nproducts, volatile input costs, and economic risks for this very cyclical
\nindustry. However, a combination of recent positive restructuring initiatives,
\ncost-cutting implementations, and strengthened liquidity profiles underpin our
\nexpectations of stable ratings performance. As a result, we believe that the
\nsector is better equipped to face an economic downturn than it was in 2008.<\/p>\n

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All ratings in the sector but one currently have stable outlooks. The
\nexception is Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget SCA (SCA), which we assigned a
\npositive outlook on Oct. 1, 2012, thanks to its improving profitability
\nprospects. In terms of rating actions, there have been no downgrades so far in
\n2012 and none in 2011, after multiple downgrades in 2006-2010. In fact, we
\nupgraded two companies–Mondi Group in October 2011, and Smurfit Kappa Group
\nPLC in February this year–because of improving business risk profiles and
\nreduced debt. We have revised several outlooks since January 2011, eight in a
\npositive direction and four in a negative direction. In our view, most issuers
\nhave some ratings leeway in terms of profitability and financial performance,
\nalthough we note that the current difficult environment could lead to
\nfinancial profiles on the low end of our expectations in the coming year.<\/p>\n

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Although the median rating on European forest product companies is ‘BB’, the
\nspectrum is wide, from a high of ‘BBB+’ (SCA) to a low of ‘B-‘ (Norske
\nSkogindustrier ASA and Metsa Board Corp. ). The 10 companies we rate fall
\ninto three credit clusters:<\/p>\n

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— ‘BBB’ category companies, which focus on less-volatile end-user
\nproducts and have financial profiles with modest leverage and sound cash flow
\ngeneration;<\/p>\n

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— ‘BB’ rated companies that are vulnerable to weak paper markets and
\nhave relatively high leverage; and<\/p>\n

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— ‘B’ rated companies that operate in difficult segments and have very
\nhigh leverage.<\/p>\n

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We have included SCA in this report card because it has relatively large
\nforest product operations and remains Europe’s largest private forestland
\nowner. However, it has reorganized to focus largely on hygiene products and
\nnow only about 20% of SCA’s annual sales will come from forest products.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oct 05 – In a report published today, titled “Outlook Stable For European Forest Products Companies, Despite Soft Paper Markets And Economic Headwinds”, Standard Poor’s Ratings Services said that it anticipates broadly stable credit trends this year for the 10 forest products companies it rates in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. This is despite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-15304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}