United Natural Foods Inc. (UNFI), a U.S. based wholesale distributor, is acquiring SUPERVALU Inc. (SVU), adding a material amount of debt to a company that has historically been run with (and we expect will return to) a conservative financial policy. As a result, we are assigning a 'B+' issuer credit rating and stable outlook to UNFI. We are also assigning our 'B+' issue-level rating and '3' recovery rating to the company's proposed $2.05 billion senior secured term loan. The stable outlook reflects our expectation that UNFI will achieve expected synergies, benefits, and deleveraging from this target despite the weakness in the lower-margin core SVU business and elevated logistics costs industry-wide. On Oct. 2, 2018, S&P Global Ratings assigned its 'B+'
