U.S. cable operator Cable One Inc. faces heightened competition from fiber-to-the home (FTTH) and fixed wireless access (FWA) providers, which has pressured its earnings. Given the company's weakening business prospects, S&P Global Ratings revised its downgrade threshold for the 'BB-' rating to leverage of more than 4.0x from 4.5x previously. We expect Cable One?s leverage, absent the acquisition of Mega Broadband Communications Investments Intermediate I LLC (MBI), will remain in the low-4x area through 2027. Therefore, we lowered all our ratings on Cable One by one notch, including lowering the issuer credit rating (ICR) to 'B+' from 'BB-'. The ratings remain on CreditWatch, where we placed them with negative implications on June 23, 2026. The negative CreditWatch indicates that we
