Fitch Affirms Plum Creek Timber Company Ratings at 'BBB-'.CHICAGO -- Fitch Ratings Fitch Ratings An international rating agency for financial institutions, insurance companies, and corporate, sovereign, and municipal debt. Fitch Ratings has headquarters in New York and London and is wholly owned by FIMALAC of Paris. has affirmed Plum Creek Timber Plum Creek Timber (NYSE: PCL) is the largest private landowner in the United States. Most of its lands were originally purchased as timberland.[1] Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Plum Creek was spun off from Burlington Resources as a master limited Company's (Plum Creek) senior unsecured debt Unsecured debt Debt that does not identify specific assets that the debtholder is entitled to in case of default. ratings at 'BBB-'. The Rating Outlook is Stable. Plum Creek's unsecured private placements and unsecured bank debt are suitably sized to the company's recurring cash flow and dividend stream. Operating margins in the company's core timberland business show low volatility, and cash flow is enhanced by the opportunistic sales of non-strategic and 'higher and better use' timberlands. Fiscal 2004 was a boon year for the company, driven largely by timberland sales and a turn in the fortunes of manufactured wood products with record prices for lumber and plywood and a 25% increase in the amount of medium density fiberboard fi·ber·board n. A building material composed of wood chips or plant fibers bonded together and compressed into rigid sheets. Noun 1. sold. A somewhat softer performance in 2005 is expected with the end use markets for sawlogs and pulpwood pulp·wood n. Soft wood, such as spruce, aspen, or pine, used in making paper. pulpwood Noun pine, spruce, or any other soft wood used to make paper Noun 1. showing weaker price momentum. This is not likely to either upset the balance of the company's leverage to cash flow or detract from the payout of earnings; and net debt/EBITDA at year-end is anticipated to be approximately 2.6 times (x). Plum Creek is a real estate investment trust with 7.8 million acres of timberland under its control and is the largest private timberland owner in the U.S. The company harvests nearly 19 million tons of trees annually. Plum Creek estimates that nearly 1.3 million acres of its portfolio have values higher than that of tree farming, and that another one million acres are non-strategic. Additional information on Plum Creek can be found on the Fitch Ratings web site at 'www.fitchratings.com'. Fitch's rating definitions are available on the agency's public web site, 'www.fitchratings.com'. Published ratings, criteria and methodologies and 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 this site, at all times. This document will remain on the public site for seven days. |
|
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion