DBRS Places NBFM’s Toll-Based Debt Under Review with Positive Implications

DBRS Limited (DBRS) has today placed Tranche A and Tranche B of the Senior Toll-Based Debt (the Toll-Based Debt) of New Brunswick (F-M) Project Company Inc. (NBFM) Under Review with Positive Implications. The rating action is in the anticipation that NBFM, New Brunswick Highway Corporation (NBHC) and the toll-based lenders will be shortly amending the concession agreement and debt documents to remove the traffic-counting element from the calculation of revenues payable to NBFM and that in the future, toll-based debt will be serviced by NBHC, a Crown corporation, independent of traffic volumes or other performance risks.

DBRS expects that once the revised documentation has been finalized in a form materially consistent to that reviewed by DBRS that it will upgrade the rating of the Toll-Based Debt to A (high) and contemporaneously revise the trend to Stable, in line with the rating of the Province of New Brunswick. The A (high) rating and Stable trend assigned to the Highway Bonds remains unchanged.

Notes:
The related regulatory disclosures pursuant to the National Instrument 25-101 Designated Rating Organizations are hereby incorporated by reference and can be found by clicking on the link to the right under Related Research or by contacting us at info@dbrs.com.

The applicable methodology is Rating Public-Private Partnerships (November 2012), which can be found on our website under Methodologies.