NEW YORK (Standard & Poor's) Jan. 10, 2006--Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said today that there would be no impact on the ratings on Home Depot Inc. after the company announced that it plans to acquire Hughes Supply Inc. for an aggregate consideration of $3.47 billion. This includes the payment of $46.50 per outstanding share and the assumption of $285 million in net debt. Home Depot is well able to digest this acquisition at the current ratings, given its good credit metrics and free cash flow generation. If the transaction were fully funded with debt, pro forma lease-adjusted debt to EBITDA leverage for the trailing 12 months would increase to around 1x, from 0.6x at Oct. 30, 2005. Hughes Supply
