Qatari real estate company Ezdan was upgraded to B- from CCC by S&P. The upgrade comes after the developer secured a QAR 830mn ($228mn) financing to address its $500mn dollar sukuk maturing April 5, 2022. S&P believes that the short-term default risk is now remote thanks to the above, combined with cash of QAR 1.1bn ($300mn) at end-2021. expects the developer’s revenue to increase by more than 40% in 2022. The forecasted uptick in revenues is due to rental rate increases and increased economic activity due to the World Cup (held in Qatar in November 2022). Occupancy levels are expected to stay high at ~93%. While its capital structure is expected to remain highly leveraged, adjusted debt to EBITDA is set to improve to about 10x in 2022 from ~16x in 2021. Also, S&P believes that EBITDA/Interest could strengthen to around 1.5-2.0x from 1.3x in 2021.
Ezdan’s 4.875% sukuk due April 2022 was trading stable at 99.5.
