S&P Global Ratings rates over 4,600 corporates globally, providing timely insight into cross-industry credit trends
Explanation of a rating action on a debt issue, including changes to a recovery rating. In addition, rating actions on a group of issuers can be bundled and published as rating actions news, without individual research updates. The report provides the rating action rationales for the group of entities or sector, followed by entity-specific rationales, reflecting the view of a rating committee.
Overview and rationale of a rating action taken at the issuer level, following a rating committee. These rating actions include newly assigned credit ratings, rating changes, outlook/CreditWatch revisions, as well as rating affirmations. It may include additional details, such as the description of the base-case forecast scenario, updated liquidity, as well as issue-related recovery analysis. Research updates for new issuer ratings can be more extensive and include more sections and tables, similar to a full analysis.
Quick and timely report commenting on results or addressing a particular development or event that has no current impact on the credit rating of an issuer (i.e., it is not a rating action decided by a rating committee). In some cases, bulletins may also include updated financials or a forecast table.
Detailed report on an individual company providing the issuer credit rating (ICR) and a breakdown of the scores that make up the rating, together with peer, financial summary, and financial reconciliation tables. These reports are typically published once per year; however, a second full analysis may be published during that timeframe with abbreviated content. Full analyses cover the issuer’s key strengths and risks, recent credit highlights, as well as outlook/CreditWatch, including rating downside and upside scenarios; followed by our base-case forecasts. Other sections include business description, peer comparison, business and financial risk profiles; and comments on liquidity, covenant analysis, and issue-level recovery or subordination analysis (for speculative-grade and investment-grade issuers, respectively). Occasionally, a dedicated full analysis report may focus solely on the recovery analysis and debt issue ratings of a speculative-grade issuer.
To provide additional disclosure and transparency to the market, from mid-November 2021, S&P Global Ratings started publishing ESG credit indicators for individual companies in the corporate and infrastructure, and insurance sectors; other asset classes will be covered during 2022. These indicators will initially be released through the ESG credit indicator report cards for the relevant sector. Subsequently, they will be incorporated and updated in S&P Global Ratings’ issuer- and issue-specific publications to complement the existing credit rating analysis and surveillance.