Geographically diverse attractions portfolio. Strong earnings record and industry-leading margins. Growing proportion of revenues from all-year sites. Equity support from largest shareholder KIRKBI A/S. Heavily seasonal business. Cyclical business, exposed to challenging consumer spending trends. Highly leveraged financial position. Significant operating lease liabilities. The rating on Luxembourg-based Merlin Entertainments S.a.r.l. (Merlin) reflects Standard&Poor's Ratings Services' view of the group's highly leveraged financial position, relatively high capital expenditure (capex), and significant operating lease liabilities. These factors underpin our view of Merlin's financial profile as highly leveraged. Mitigating Merlin's highly leveraged capital structure is our assessment of the group's liquidity profile as adequate, which gets support from our view of the group's fairly flexible capex. We understand that maintenance capex
