U.S. restaurant franchisor and operator Brinker International Inc. has announced its intention to offer $350 million senior notes due 2024. The company will use net proceeds from the offering to repurchase up to $300 million of its common stock and repay up to $50 million of outstanding debt under the revolving credit facility. We are lowering the ratings, including the corporate credit rating to 'BB+' from 'BBB-', and removing them from CreditWatch, where we placed them with negative implications in August 2016. The downgrade reflects our expectation of the company's higher leverage (with adjusted debt to EBITDA above 3x) on a sustained basis based upon the company's choice to operate with more debt. We don't anticipate any changes in our
