Standard & Poor’s revises Italcementi rating

Standard & Poor’s announced Friday that it has revised the corporate rating of Italcementi SpA, and as a consequence the rating of Italcementi Finance SA’s outstanding unsecured bonds, from BB+ with negative outlook to BB with stable outlook. The rating of Ciments Français SAS’ remaining outstanding bond is also revised to BB/stable.

“We acknowledge Standard & Poor’s decision, even if it comes just ahead of what we believe is going to be a positive earnings cycle, driven by both the progressive recovery of demand in our end markets, in many cases already ongoing, and the result of our efficiency actions and investments, which have created a good platform to take advantage of future demand growth ” said Giovanni Maggiora, Group CFO.

“We are actively maintaining financial ratios under control: we expect, after a tighter situation during the year, driven also by seasonality factors and temporary foreign exchange effects, year-end group leverage improving compare to year end 2014, with adequate headroom under our 3.75x financial covenants," he added.