In the wake of customer losses on the back of network quality and overall perception issues in early 2016, SFR Group's 2016 year-end results were weaker than expected, despite signs of recovery in the second half of the year. Although we believe SFR's performances will continue to rebound in 2017, higher leverage than we anticipated at end-2016, alongside heavy ongoing capital spending this year, will translate into a structurally weaker credit profile than we previously forecasted. This leads us to revise down our assessment of SFR's stand-alone credit profile (SACP) to 'bb-' from 'bb' Although SFR's SACP is higher than the 'b+' group credit profile (GCP) for the holding company Altice N.V., the GCP constrains the rating on SFR, because
