Fitch Rates HMN Senior Notes 'BBB'; Outlook Stable.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 assigned a 'BBB' rating to Horace Mann Educators Corp's (HMN HMN Hemmings Motor News ) proposed offering of $125 million 10-year notes. At the same time Fitch affirms HMN's 'BBB+' 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. ) and 'BBB' senior debt ratings. The Rating Outlook is Stable. Fitch's expectation is that HMN will use proceeds from the offering to repay existing debt, including the refinancing of its 1.425% senior convertible notes due 2032, and for general corporate purposes. Since year-end 2005, HMN has repurchased approximately $156 million of its outstanding convertible notes at a cost of $73.3 million. Fitch estimates HMN's year-end 2006 financial leverage to be approximately 25% with the issuance of the notes, which is within Fitch's rating expectations. GAAP-based EBIT EBIT See: Earnings Before Interest and Taxes EBIT See earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT). fixed-charge coverage is strong and expected to exceed 9 times (x) for 2006. Fitch's ratings on HMN continue to reflect the solid risk-based capitalization of HMN's insurance subsidiaries, high quality, liquid investment portfolios, and well-defined niche in the educators market. Fitch's primary ratings concerns are the company's relatively high operating leverage and earnings volatility, although going forward, we expect the latter to be dampened by the company's enhanced catastrophe reinsurance The contract made between an insurance company and a third party to protect the insurance company from losses. The contract provides for the third party to pay for the loss sustained by the insurance company when the company makes a payment on the original contract. program. Fitch rates the following with a Stable Rating Outlook: Horace Mann Educators Corp. --Senior debt 6.85% notes due 2016 'BBB'. In addition Fitch affirms the following: --Issuer Default Rating 'BBB+'; --Senior convertible debt due 2032 'BBB'; --Senior debt 6.05% notes due June 15, 2015 'BBB'. 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. |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion