Fitch begins coverage of REN with BBB rating

The international rating agency Fitch has begun coverage of REN with a rating of BBB, the highest given to a Portuguese company and two levels above Portugal as a country.

This assessment positions REN as the Portuguese company with the highest rating at the three world agencies together (Fitch, Moody´s and Standard and Poor´s).

'We have managed to achieve the maximum rating given to a Portuguese company by Fitch, which places us among the three highest-rated Portuguese companies,' said CFO, Gonçalo Morais Soares. He believes that this is recognition of the work that the company did following its privatisation in early 2012. 'We have been working very hard in the last nine to 12 months to solidify our financing position through new banks and sources of funding and by renegotiating existing loans'.

He also said that Fitch's rating brought more comfort in terms of lower debt costs. 'This may help us to continue to improve our debt costs,' he said. 'It's always good to be in a comfortable position in which we issue when we want to and not because we need to,' he added.

This was Fitch's first rating for REN, which already has a rating of Ba1 from Moody's and BB+ from S&P. The scores are in the first degree of investment in both cases.