...- On July 15, 2024, Ohio-based Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Stelco Holdings Inc., the parent company of Stelco Inc., a Canadian-based steel producer with blast furnace operations. The proposed transaction reflects an enterprise value of $2.5 billion. - Cliffs plans to finance the proposed acquisition with equity, cash on hand, and about $2.8 billion of incremental debt. - While the proposed acquisition would enhance Cliffs' scale by adding two facilities, including one blast furnace, we expect leverage to exceed 3x due to the significant use of debt proposed to finance the acquisition. - As a result, we revised our outlook to stable from positive and affirmed our '##-' issuer credit rating. - We affirmed our '##-' issue-level rating on the senior unsecured debt and 'B' issue-level rating on the subordinated debt, and their associated recovery ratings are unchanged. - The stable outlook reflects our expectation of leverage exceeding...
