Ascend Performance Materials Operations LLC has upcoming debt maturities that it has not yet addressed and its performance over the past year was much weaker than our previous expectations. We anticipate recovery will remain slow, resulting in elevated debt leverage metrics in 2025. As result, we lowered our issuer credit rating on Ascend to 'CCC+' from 'B'. At the same time, we lowered the issue-level rating on Ascend's senior secured term loan to 'CCC+' from 'B'. The recovery rating is unchanged at '3' (50%). The negative outlook reflects risks associated with the term loan becoming current this year, the company?s tight liquidity position, and potentially slower-than-anticipated improvement in credit metrics relative to our base case. These could result in weaker
