S&P assigns BB-/"stable" rating to Atlantic Power

Dec 22, 2011 - S&P on Wednesday gave its BB- corporate credit rating with a "stable" outlook to US power plant operator Atlantic Power Corp (TSE:ATP).

The service also attached BB- issue-level rating and a recovery rating of 3 to the company's USD 460 million (EUR 352m) senior unsecured notes due 2018.

The rating on Atlantic Power captures the assessments of its business profile as "fair" and its financial profile as "significant", S&P said. These assumptions are based on the company's dependence on distributions from its underlying portfolio of energy projects, its resource concentration on natural gas, high leverage and exposure to increases in operation and maintenance costs.

On November 5, 2011 Boston-based Atlantic Power closed its acquisition of Canadian publicly traded limited partnership Capital Power Income LP, bringing the US company's operational power generation projects in USA and Canada to 30 with a combined capacity of 2,116 MW.

Atlantic Power also has a 53.5-MW biomass project under construction and a majority stake in biomass power plant developer Rollcast Energy as well as regulated transmission line.

Rating agency website: www.standardandpoors.com

Choose your newsletter by Renewables Now. Join for free!