Bulletin: Compass Group PLC Ratings Unaffected By Special Dividend Announcement

LONDON (S&P Global Ratings) May 10, 2017--S&P Global Ratings said today that its ratings and outlook on U.K.-based multinational food services provider Compass Group PLC (A/Stable/--) are unaffected by the company's announcement that it will pay a largely debt-funded special cash dividend to shareholders of about £1 billion. In its announcement, Compass reiterated its commitment to maintain net debt of 1.5x--translating into S&P Global Ratings-adjusted funds from operations (FFO) to debt of about 40%-45%. We consider this to be commensurate with our assessment of its financial risk profile as intermediate. Incorporating the impact of this special dividend, we forecast that Compass will maintain adjusted FFO to debt above 40%, on average, over the next three years. This incorporates our base-case

...LONDON (S&P Global Ratings) May 10, 2017--S&P Global Ratings said today that its ratings and outlook on U.K.-based multinational food services provider Compass Group PLC (A/Stable/--) are unaffected by the company's announcement that it will pay a largely debt-funded special cash dividend to shareholders of about ú1 billion. In its announcement, Compass reiterated its commitment to maintain net debt of 1.5x--translating into S&P Global Ratings-adjusted funds from operations (FFO) to debt of about 40%-45%. We consider this to be commensurate with our assessment of its financial risk profile as intermediate. Incorporating the impact of this special dividend, we forecast that Compass will maintain adjusted FFO to debt above 40%, on average, over the next three years. This incorporates our base-case forecast that the group will maintain its organic revenue growth of about 4%-5% over the next two years and continue to improve margins and increase its absolute free operating cash flow generation....

Bulletin