Icade Affirmed At 'BBB+/A-2' On Material Leverage Improvements After Health Care Divestment; Outlook Stable

Icade's recently announced plans to divest its health care activities would reduce the group's portfolio size, quality, and diversity, in our view. Positively, the divestment would yield gross proceeds of about €3.0 billion that allow Icade to materially reduce its debt leverage and reinvest opportunistically, while keeping debt to debt plus equity around 35.0%--markedly lower than the 44.5% reported at end-2022--in line with the group's revised long-term financial policy. We therefore affirmed our 'BBB+/A-2' long- and short-term issuer credit ratings on Icade. The stable outlook reflects our expectation that Icade's debt-to-debt-plus-equity ratio should improve toward 35% over the next 24 months, alongside a reduction in debt to EBITDA to below 8.5x despite a more volatile revenue generation, continued generation of

...March 15, 2023 - Icade's recently announced plans to divest its health care activities would reduce the group's portfolio size, quality, and diversity, in our view. - Positively, the divestment would yield gross proceeds of about 3.0 billion that allow Icade to materially reduce its debt leverage and reinvest opportunistically, while keeping debt to debt plus equity around 35.0%--markedly lower than the 44.5% reported at end-2022--in line with the group's revised long-term financial policy. - We therefore affirmed our '###+/A-2' long- and short-term issuer credit ratings on Icade. - The stable outlook reflects our expectation that Icade's debt-to-debt-plus-equity ratio should improve toward 35% over the next 24 months, alongside a reduction in debt to EBITDA to below 8.5x despite a more volatile revenue generation, continued generation of more than 70% of its EBITDA from property rental income, and progressive reinvestments income-generating assets of the same, or higher, quality. PARIS...

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