Ares Capital Corp.'s Board of Directors approved the application of the modified asset coverage requirement allowed by the Small Business Credit Availability Act. The approval will lower the company's required asset coverage to 150% from 200% in June 2019. As a result, we are lowering our issuer credit rating on Ares Capital Corp. to 'BBB-' from 'BBB'. We are also lowering the rating on the company's senior unsecured and senior secured debt to 'BBB-' from 'BBB'. The stable outlook reflects our expectation that the company will continue to perform well relative to peers. We believe that the company will rotate a portion of its portfolio into somewhat lower-yielding investments over the longer term as it employs the additional leverage. On
