FRANKFURT - The international credit rating agency Standard and Poor's said Thursday it was raising its rating on the long-term debt of telecommunications giant Deutsche Telekom as the company was cutting debt faster than expected and improving its operating performance.
S and P said in a statement it was uppping the long-term corporate credit rating for Europe's biggest telecoms group to A-minus ("A-") from triple-B-plus ("BBB+").
The rating agency also affirmed the A-two ("A-2") rating on Deutsche Telekom's short-term debt with stable outlook.
"Although the pace of debt reduction should come to a drastic halt in 2005, we believe that Deutsche Telekom has sufficiently improved its credit ratios, delivered suitably strong cash flow generation, and accumulated enough financial flexibility to be rated at this new level," S and P analyst Guy Deslondes wrote.
Earlier on Thursday, Deutsche Telekom unveiled a threefold increase in net profits last year to 4.6 billion euros (six billion dollars) and an 11.4 billion-euro reduction in net debt to 35.2 billion euros, helped by divestments, such as the sale of a stake in the Russian mobile phone company MTS and in the satellite operator SES Global.
03/03/2005 13:02 GMT