МОSCOW (
MRC) -- Celanese Corporation has replaced its secured credit facility with an unsecured credit facility, consisting of a USD500-million unsecured term loan and a USD1-billion unsecured revolver, each maturing in July 2021, said the Moody's.
The transaction was completed on 15 July. Moody’s today upgraded Celanese to an investment-grade rating for the first time since it was acquired by Blackstone in 2004. Celanese CFO Chris Jensen said that the "transaction represents a key step in the progression towards [Celanese] goal of an investment grade credit rating. The upgrade is tempered by a bolt-on acquisition driven growth strategy, which, adds a modest level of event risk. However, if it is successful, it should allow the company to grow significantly faster than GDP while improving profitability," stated John Rogers, Senior Vice President at Moody's and lead analyst on Celanese. "We expect that Celanese will continue to generate USD500-800 million per year of free cash flow, which should fund these transactions and provide additional flexibility to undertake opportunistic share repurchases."
As MRC
informed earlier, in 2015, Mitsui & Co. announced that Fairway Methanol LLC, a 50-50 joint venture between Mitsui and US-based chemicals company Celanese, has commenced production of methanol at its planned annual production capacity of 1.3 million tons.
Celanese Corporation is a global technology leader in the production of differentiated chemistry solutions and specialty materials used in most major industries and consumer applications. Based in Dallas, Celanese employs approximately 7,000 employees worldwide and had 2015 net sales of USD5.7 billion.
MRC