NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's) Jan. 24, 2013--Standard&Poor's Ratings Services said today that it lowered its unsecured debt rating to 'BB-' from 'BB' on Ohio-based Scotts Miracle-Gro Co.'s existing 7.25% senior notes due 2018 and 6.625% senior notes due 2020. At the same time, we are revising the recovery rating to '6' from '5', indicating our expectation for negligible (0% to 10%) recovery for noteholders in the event of a payment default. We also assigned our preliminary 'BB-' unsecured debt rating to the company's Rule 415 shelf registration. The 'BB+' corporate credit rating on Scotts remains unchanged. The outlook is stable. We are lowering our issue-level rating to reflect a lower enterprise value as a result of the
