NGC defends Moody’s exit

KE­JAN HAYNES

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go Lim­it­ed (NGC) is de­fend­ing its de­ci­sion to end its re­la­tion­ship with Moody’s In­vestors Ser­vice, say­ing the move forms part of a strate­gic re­align­ment aimed at se­cur­ing a cred­it rat­ing that bet­ter re­flects the com­pa­ny’s stand­alone fi­nan­cial strength.

The re­sponse comes a day af­ter Moody’s with­drew NGC’s Ba2 cor­po­rate fam­i­ly rat­ing, ba2 base­line cred­it as­sess­ment and Ba2 se­nior un­se­cured notes rat­ing.

Moody’s said the with­draw­al was due to “in­ad­e­quate in­for­ma­tion to mon­i­tor the rat­ings, due to the is­suer’s de­ci­sion to cease par­tic­i­pa­tion in the rat­ing process.”

How­ev­er, NGC said the split stemmed from what it de­scribed as “fun­da­men­tal dif­fer­ences” in the way Moody’s as­sess­es sov­er­eign link­age and state-owned en­ter­pris­es.

Ac­cord­ing to NGC, Moody’s “rigid method­olog­i­cal frame­work” failed to recog­nise the com­pa­ny’s “unique cir­cum­stances” and “in­trin­sic cred­it qual­i­ty,” par­tic­u­lar­ly fol­low­ing what it de­scribed as a “clear in­flec­tion point” in its per­for­mance over the last ten months.

NGC said its 2025 fi­nan­cial fore­cast projects prof­it-af­ter-tax of ap­prox­i­mate­ly TT$3.3 bil­lion, which it de­scribed as its high­est lev­el of prof­itabil­i­ty in 11 years, along with pro­ject­ed rev­enue of TT$23.7 bil­lion.

The com­pa­ny said it has now added Fitch Rat­ings to its port­fo­lio of in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies along­side S&P Glob­al Rat­ings.

NGC al­so said it re­mains open to fu­ture re-en­gage­ment with Moody’s should the agency adopt an ap­proach that bet­ter re­flects the com­pa­ny’s “per­for­mance tra­jec­to­ry and the ex­pec­ta­tion of a more favourable cred­it rat­ing over time.”