Lecta's notes have dropped since the company reported its 4Q results, which showed a continued EBITDA decline.
While we expect the structural decline in fine paper demand to go on hurting Lecta's volumes, its margins in 1Q19 should improve markedly year over year.
We maintain our Deteriorating issuer credit outlook on the group, which still needs to spend time and money moving away from the structurally weak graphic paper business.
But its bonds seem to be pricing in near-term distress, contrary to what we expect.
Moody's changes outlook on Lecta to negative; affirms B2 ratings
13 Dec 2018
Frankfurt am Main, December 13, 2018 -- Moody's Investors Service ("Moody's") has today changed the outlook on Lecta S.A. (Lecta) to negative from stable. At the same time Moody's affirmed its B2 Corporate family rating, it B2-PD probability of default rating as well as B2 ratings of the senior secured bonds issued by Lecta.
RATINGS RATIONALE
RATIONALE FOR NEGATIVE OUTLOOK
Today's rating action reflects that Lecta's performance through 2018 has been below Moody's expectations, in particular when it comes to cash flow generation. Contrary to the agency's original expectation Lecta has not continued on a deleveraging trajectory during the year, keeping its Moody's adjusted debt/EBITDA flat at 6.5x since the beginning of the year, which remains fairly high in the context of its B2 rating.
Owing to higher capital spending and significant increase in working capital, the company reported roughly EUR100 million negative free cash flows (as defined by Moody's, i.e. including gross capital spending and interest paid) for the nine months to September 2019. This has led to a material reduction of Lecta's cash balances to around EUR70 million at the end of September 2018 from roughly EUR140 million at the end of December 2017, making it more challenging to use Lecta's historically strong liquidity as compensating factor for its fairly high leverage. While the rating agency expects that Lecta will be able to partially reverse the cash burn in the typically seasonally strongest fourth quarter, it still remains to be seen whether the company will manage to structurally release working capital and regain a stronger liquidity buffer, which is also reflected in the negative outlook.
Another risk factor is uncertainty around the further evolution of Lecta's coated woodfree (CWF) business. During 2018, Lecta managed to partially compensate for unprecedented cost inflation, in particular for pulp costs that increased on average by roughly 30% since the beginning of the year. Success in pushing through higher selling prices prevented a major deterioration of EBITDA in the business despite the extremely challenging operating environment. However, after the summer, the business has started to show signs of an acceleration of declining demand with high single digit % volume losses year-on-year, compared to roughly 3-4% on average since 2008.
If such acceleration persists into 2019, the industry's capacity utilisation rate will further decline to below 90%, which is likely to negatively affect the pricing power of CWF producers. At the same time, we expect input costs to remain high. Whilst recently showing some signs of stabilisation and even slight decline, Moody's expects that pulp prices are unlikely to sustainably weaken over the coming two years. There is relatively limited new pulp supply coming to the market until 2020 and while there are indications that a rate of demand increase for paper-packaging and tissue worldwide, which are increasingly important drivers for pulp demand, might be somewhat slowing down, the underlying demand continues to grow. The negative outlook thus reflects the risk that the rate of Lecta's CWF EBITDA decline will accelerate in 2019 and it remains to be seen whether ongoing capacity additions and conversions into specialty paper will compensate for these pressures sufficiently for Lecta to continue its deleveraging trajectory.
RATIONALE FOR AFFIRMATION OF THE RATINGS
The affirmation of the ratings primarily reflects the fact that while its cash buffer has materially reduced, Lecta's liquidity is still adequate. Apart from roughly EUR70 million cash, as of the end of September 2018 the company had access to an EUR65 million revolving credit facility, with EUR15 million drawings. The facility does not contain any material conditionality language such as maintenance financial covenants, can be upsized to EUR80 million and matures in 2022. As of the end of September 2018 the company reported roughly EUR50 million of short-term debt, mostly overdrafts and drawings under the revolving facility, with the next material debt maturity being the EUR225 million of floating rate notes in 2022. However, Moody's cautions that the company has a relatively sizeable exposure to various supply chain financing arrangements, including factoring and confirming, some of which are of short-term nature and uncommitted.
The affirmation also reflects the fact that whilst the deleveraging trajectory has stopped in 2018 and there are uncertainties with regards to further deleveraging, the composition of EBITDA has changed. Now already more than 50% of EBITDA generation comes from the specialty paper business with various labelling applications with good underlying growth and exposure to less cyclical industries, such as food and beverage, which inherently improves the resilience of the company even without deleveraging.