Fitch: Baxter International's 'A-' Unaffected by New Unsecured Credit Facility.CHICAGO -- Fitch maintains Baxter International's (NYSE NYSE See: New York Stock Exchange :BAX) ratings as follows: --Issuer Default Rating (IDR IDR In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the Indonesian Rupiah. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. ) 'A-'; --Unsecured bank credit facility 'A-'; --Unsecured debt 'A-'; --Short-term debt 'F2'. The Rating Outlook is Positive. The ratings apply to $2.81 billion of debt. Baxter replaced its two revolving unsecured credit facilities (aggregate availability of $1.44 billion) with a 5-year $1.5 billion revolving unsecured credit facility, with a $500 million accordion feature. The new facility is less restrictive than the old facilities and provides for borrowings in U.S. Dollars, Euro, Swiss Francs, Japanese Yen, and other eligible currencies. BAX generated a reported $793 million in Free Cash Flow (Net Cash Flow From Operations Cash flow from operations A firm's net cash inflow resulting directly from its regular operations (disregarding extraordinary items such as the sale of fixed assets or transaction costs associated with issuing securities), calculated as the sum of net income plus noncash expenses , Less Capital Expenditures, Less Dividends), during the latest 12 months (LTM LTM abbr. long-term memory ), ending Sept. 30, 2006. This number is after the effect of an extraordinary contribution to the company's pension plans during Q4 2005 (The company contributed $135 million to its pension plans in 2004 and $574 million in 2005). Interest coverage (EBITDA/Interest) was 17.65 times (x) and leverage (Total Debt/EBITDA) was 1.25x for LTM, ending Sept. 30, 2006. The firm has approximately $2.07 billion in cash and equivalents. Fitch's rating definitions and the terms of use Terms of Use are rules set up by the owner of an intellectual property or service to govern how they may be legally used. In many cases, terms of service are used as a contractual agreement between a company and users of a service they provide. of such ratings are available on the agency's public site, www.fitchratings.com. Published ratings, criteria and methodologies are available from this site, at all times. Fitch's code of conduct, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, affiliate firewall, compliance and other relevant policies and procedures Policies and Procedures are a set of documents that describe an organization's policies for operation and the procedures necessary to fulfill the policies. They are often initiated because of some external requirement, such as environmental compliance or other governmental are also available from the 'Code of Conduct' section of this site. |
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