Delphi says investment grade rating may come within 12 months
Q1 net income rose 17.5%; company raises 2012 projections
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DETROIT (Bloomberg) -- Delphi Automotive, following a first quarter that included a 17.5 percent gain in net income, said it may earn an investment-grade rating in about 12 months.
“Our metrics are investment grade,” Chief Financial Officer Kevin Clark said in an interview. “We’ll continue to perform and put up some good numbers and pay down some amount of debt and that investment-grade rating should come with it.”
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services on March 16 raised its corporate credit rating on Delphi to BB+, the highest non- investment grade.
“My estimate, and I probably should say it’s really a guesstimate, is that it’s roughly a year out from today” to achieve an investment-grade rating, Clark said. “We don’t control that.”
Delphi said today that first-quarter net income rose 17.5 percent to $342 million, or $1.04 a share, from $291 million, or 42 cents. Sales increased 2.4 percent to $4.09 billion.
Profit this year will be $3.63 to $3.85 a share, Delphi said today. In January, it forecast profit of $3.44 to $3.69 a share. The average estimate of 11 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg was for a full-year profit of $3.71 a share.
The company, the former General Motors parts unit, returned to profitability in 2010 after cutting costs and focusing on selling fuel-injection systems and other car parts in faster- growing countries such as China.
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