S&P's upgrading of Greece's Public Power Corp. (PPC), the state-run and dominant electricity utility in the country, bodes well for the ATHEX-listed company's efforts to restructure in the next six months.
S&P's upgrading of Greece's Public Power Corp. (PPC), the state-run and dominant electricity utility in the country, bodes well for the ATHEX-listed company's efforts to restructure in the next six months.
In an announcement, PPC said the development reflects a successful debt restructuring of 1.3 billion euros recently with a consortium of Greek banks, as well as improved collection of arrears and prospects for the Greek economy, in general.
In basing its decision to upgrade the long-term issuer credit rating for Public Power Corp. S.A. (PPC) to 'CCC+' from 'CCC' and its outlook as "positive", S&P noted:
"Greek utility Public Power Corp. (PPC) has successfully secured liquidity
sources to meet debt maturities in 2019 including the €1.3 billion
syndicated loans with Greek banks and the April 2019 maturities on its
€350 million unsecured notes.
Improved economic prospects in Greece slightly enhances the Greek
government's capacity to provide PPC extraordinary support.
However, we continue to have doubts over the long-term sustainability of
PPC's operations given the ongoing very weak market fundamentals, which
leaves the capital structure still fragile.
We are therefore raising our long-term issuer credit and issue ratings on
PPC to 'CCC+'.
The positive outlook reflects that on the Greek government and our
expectations that PPC would receive extraordinary support in case of
need, specifically in the form of facilitated access to financing markets."