Bulletin: 3M Co. Ratings Unaffected By Settlement Payment To Minnesota

NEW YORK (S&P Global Ratings) Feb. 21, 2018--S&P Global Ratings said today that its ratings and outlook on St. Paul, Minnesota-based 3M Co. (AA-/Stable/A-1+) are unaffected by the company's announcement of a settlement with the state of Minnesota relating to a lawsuit over certain manufacturing compounds present in the environment. As part of the settlement, 3M will provide an $850 million grant to support water sustainability in the Twin Cities East Metro region. The grant, although significant, does not impact our view of the company's liquidity and credit metrics. We believe the grant is likely to be paid in the near term. Even if the grant is funded with short term debt, we expect it to be repaid via the

...NEW YORK (S&P Global Ratings) Feb. 21, 2018--S&P Global Ratings said today that its ratings and outlook on St. Paul, Minnesota-based 3M Co. (##-/Stable/A-1+) are unaffected by the company's announcement of a settlement with the state of Minnesota relating to a lawsuit over certain manufacturing compounds present in the environment. As part of the settlement, 3M will provide an $850 million grant to support water sustainability in the Twin Cities East Metro region. The grant, although significant, does not impact our view of the company's liquidity and credit metrics. We believe the grant is likely to be paid in the near term. Even if the grant is funded with short term debt, we expect it to be repaid via the company's free cash flow generation in 2018, which we expect will be at least $5 billion. As a result, we forecast minimal impact to the company's forecasted credit measures. We expect the company's adjusted debt to EBITDA to be in the 1.5x-2.0x range this year. As noted in the company's...

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