Established U.S. homebuilder KB Home has expanded its market presence over the past few years, increasing revenue by roughly 50% to $3.6 billion in 2016 from $2.4 billion in 2014, and has made progress on its stated objective to reduce debt. Leverage improvement in 2016 was slightly faster than we expected, and our revised forecast now calls for leverage improvement to continue to 5x-5.5x for fiscal 2017 and to below 5x in 2018. We are revising our rating outlook on the company to positive from stable. At the same time, we are affirming our 'B' corporate credit rating on the company and our 'B' issue-level rating on its senior unsecured notes. The outlook revision to positive reflects our opinion that
