OREANDA-NEWS. Fitch Ratings has published the sixth edition of the Fitch 50, capital structure diagrams & debt document summaries for 50 large U. S. leveraged credits. Companies highlighted in the latest edition had higher than average enterprise valuation multiples, mostly sufficient covenant headroom, and diverse credit metrics. Issuer Default Ratings range from 'CC' to 'BB+'.

The average enterprise value/EBITDA multiple for the Fitch 50 sample was 11.1x, higher than the 9.5x Fitch-calculated average market valuation across all U. S. corporate sectors. Most companies in the Fitch 50 had sufficient covenant headroom, although six issuers had remaining headroom of 10% or less. The sixth edition adds 14 companies to the group, many of which have large loans held widely by CLOs or were chosen because there is active trading of their debt issues in secondary markets.

About the Fitch 50

Published annually, the Fitch 50 is a high-profile compendium covering organizational structure diagrams, liquidity profiles, and credit agreement/indenture summaries of the largest 50 leveraged loan issuers. The structural analyses focus on detailed organizational charts that delineate structural relationships among various affiliate entities and debt issuances. Simplified, though still in-depth, the issuance summaries recap essential terms in bank agreements and bond structures, such as seniority, security, guarantee, negative covenants and financial covenants.