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Strategies & Market Trends : Dividend investing for retirement -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rnsmth who wrote (31167)	4/27/2019 7:58:44 AM
From: Ditchdigger	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 34328

I think the ratings issue has been going on for a while, there was a question from an analyst about it on a previous conference call. At a 7.5% yield, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I believe their avg. debt is priced below 5%. The cash generated from their mature core business' is key imo ($1.4B EBITDA) Operator Thank you. [Operator Instructions] And the next question is a follow-up from Nate Crossett with Berenberg. Nathan Crossett Hi. I just wanted to ask about investment grade potential. I'm just curious to hear about any in our recent conversations with the rating agencies and how they are viewing the data center build out. And the reason I asked is because DLR has similar leverage levels and they have investment grades. So, --. Stuart Brown You just say that to make me jealous, don’t you Nate? Nathan Crossett No. just give me a sense -- I feel like, good. Stuart Brown No, it's I can look at a number of my peers across the REIT sector they have similar leverage levels and in better ratings that we do. We've been having ongoing discussions with both S&P and Moody's in a very healthy way, as our business had shifted from historically business services we became a REIT. We're continuing grow the datacenter business. I think Moody's actually has put out a report and published that we've moved over to their REIT team and so I think we're making good progress, we're having great dialogue with them. And I think they over time will give us more credit for the REIT like durability of the cash flow that comes out of the business. William Meaney And the only thing I would just add to that to Nate is that we've done like totally -- we're both focused that we would love to be treated like digital. The other part for us is we still want to de-lever because of this free space that we have where our covenants, our covenants are set at 6.5 why that's historical but that is what it is. One thing I would say is we're already getting kind of upper end of investment grade pricing when we go out and issue debt. So, we're already getting the benefit, it's just that rating agency is just all rated that way. So, you actually see our debt get priced is we're not far off but it would be nice to have the rating as well. Stuart Brown Yes. Our debt investors give us credit for the strength in the balance sheet and cash flow. Nathan Crossett That's helpful, thanks.