NEW YORK (S&P Global Ratings) April 17, 2019--S&P Global Ratings said today that weaker performance across several businesses led to weaker performance in Cargill Inc.'s (A/Stable/A-1) third fiscal quarter, but the company's leverage is still within expectations. Several core business lines faced EBITDA declines after a prolonged period of strong results, but credit measures remain within expectations. Debt to EBITDA dropped to near 1x for the 12 months ended Feb. 28, 2019, from 1.4x a year earlier, even though EBITDA declined roughly 10% year over year through the first nine months of fiscal 2019. Animal Nutrition and Protein segment earnings were hurt by poultry processing outside the U.S. and weaker feed pricing, while Food Ingredients and Application segment margins suffered
