Moody's Investors Service, an international credit rating agency, has downgraded the foreign-currency corporate family rating of the Naftohaz Ukrainy national joint-stock company from B2 to Caa1.
The rating agency announced this in a statement, a text of which Ukrainian News obtained.
The Outlook on the rating is negative.
According
to the rating agency, the rating action reflects the agency’s
reassessment of the company’s fundamental credit quality expressed by
its Baseline Credit Assessment (BCA) as well as the government support
factor that plays an important role in the overall rating of the
company.
Moody’s
previous rating action on Naftohaz took place on May 15, when the
rating was downgraded from B1 to B2 while remaining under review for
possible further downgrade. This rating action followed the rating
agency’s decision to downgrade Ukraine’s sovereign rating from B1 to B2
and to assign a negative outlook to the rating, which had a direct
impact on the rating assigned to Naftohaz Ukrainy.
According to Moody’s rating definitions, obligations rated B are considered speculative and are subject to high credit risk.
As
Ukrainian News earlier reported, Moody’s placed Naftohaz Ukrainy’s
foreign-currency corporate rating of B1 on review for possible
downgrade in March.
Moody’s
Investors Service earlier downgraded Ukraine’s foreign- and
local-currency government bond ratings from B1 to B2 on May 12.
On
the same day, the agency also downgraded the foreign-currency country
ceiling for bonds from Ba3 to B1 and the ceiling for foreign-currency
bank deposits from B2 to B3, both with a negative outlook.
