Caribbean In­for­ma­tion and Cred­it Rat­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (Cari­CRIS) has reaf­firmed the as­signed rat­ings of Cari­AA- (For­eign and Lo­cal Cur­ren­cy Rat­ings) on the re­gion­al scale, and jmAAA (Lo­cal Cur­ren­cy Rat­ing) on the Ja­maican na­tion­al scale, to the J$13.4 bil­lion bond is­sue of Guardian Hold­ings Ltd (GHL).

The re­gion­al scale rat­ings in­di­cate that the lev­el of cred­it­wor­thi­ness of this debt oblig­a­tion, ad­judged in re­la­tion to oth­er oblig­a­tions in the Caribbean is high, the rat­ing agency said in a news re­lease yes­ter­day.

The Ja­maican na­tion­al scale rat­ing in­di­cates that the lev­el of cred­it­wor­thi­ness of this debt oblig­a­tion com­pared to oth­er debt oblig­a­tions in Ja­maica is the high­est. Cari­CRIS as­signed a sta­ble out­look on the rat­ings.

"The sta­ble out­look for GHL is based on the ex­pec­ta­tion of con­tin­ued good fi­nan­cial per­for­mance over the next 12 to 15 months. This is ex­pect­ed to be dri­ven by the sol­id per­for­mance of GHL's op­er­at­ing sub­sidiaries, which is ex­pect­ed to en­able the com­pa­ny to com­fort­ably meet its oblig­a­tions as they be­come due," said the rat­ing agency.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, all GHL’s sub­sidiaries are ex­pect­ed to re­main well-cap­i­talised. GHL’s rat­ings are sup­port­ed by the mod­er­ate in­dus­try di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and strong mar­ket po­si­tion of its sub­sidiaries, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Eng­lish and Dutch-speak­ing Caribbean.

"Al­so sup­port­ing the rat­ings is GHL’s over­all good fi­nan­cial per­for­mance, dri­ven by its reg­u­lat­ed sub­sidiaries which re­port strong cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion lev­els. Fur­ther­more, GHL main­tains good liq­uid­i­ty met­rics, en­hanc­ing its abil­i­ty to ser­vice debt," said the rat­ing agency.

"More­over, the Com­pa­ny’s ef­fec­tive risk man­age­ment sys­tems fur­ther un­der­pin these rat­ings. These rat­ing strengths are tem­pered by the struc­tur­al sub­or­di­na­tion of GHL’s cash flows, which may im­pact time­ly debt ser­vic­ing. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, GHL’s cur­rent ex­po­sure to down­side risks in Trinidad and To­ba­go and Ja­maica al­so tem­pers the rat­ings," Cari­CRIS added.