Tuesday 05 August 2014 by Legacy

DBCT Finance Pty Ltd's senior secured debt facilites downgraded by S&P

Key points:

  • On 31 July 2014, DBCT Finance Pty Ltd.'s (DBCT) senior-secured debt facilities were downgraded by S&P. The outlook remains stable and DBCT’s debt facilities remain investment grade following the downgrade
  • The rating action reflects the weakened credit quality of DBCT's customers, which was greatly influenced by the recent lowering of the issuer credit ratings on Peabody Energy. Peabody Energy has contracts for about 25% of DBCT's overall capacity. Also impacting the reassessment of the customers' creditworthiness was the recent sale by Rio Tinto of the Clermont mine to a Glencore-led joint venture, resulting in the contractual payments to DBCT relating to that mine coming from parties with a weaker credit quality
  • Overall, S&P now assess the combined credit quality of all DBCT’s customers to be weaker, which has caused the downgrade in DBCT. Under S&P’s methodology, DBCT's issue credit rating cannot be higher than the underlying credit rating of its combined customer base
  • S&P notes that the contractual and regulatory framework provides some protection against material deterioration of the credit quality of a customer, whereby, at a five-year tariff reset, the revenue previously earned from a defaulted customer is "socialised" among the customer base by spreading the revenue base across the other performing customers. This, in S&P’s view, would be of greater value if the weakening of a given customer was driven by specific company factors rather than the performance of the coal sector in Queensland as a whole
  • There has been no associated rating impact of DBCT’s downgrade on the credit rating of Adani Abbot Point Terminal (AAPT). AAPT is less exposed to Peabody Energy as a counterparty than DBCT. As the ultimate parent entity of Middlemount mine, Peabody Energy only makes up about 6% of AAPT’s total customer base. AAPT’s two largest exposures once the terminal has completed ramp up in FY16 will be with subsidiaries of (or joint ventures containing) Rio Tinto and Glencore Xstrata which together represent around half of the total throughput capacity at AAPT