Anthropic IPO: Blackstone warns it will arrive without investment grade
Article excerpt
The firm now expects a rating in the upper part of speculative grade, below the threshold that would allow the release of guarantees on one of its credit lines. The prospectus filed with the SEC on October 26 does not yet set how many shares it will offer. Anthropic's initial public offering faces its first market test without having yet set the share price. Blackstone, one of the major partners financing its infrastructure, has conveyed to its investors that it expects a credit rating in the upper part of speculative grade - in all likelihood BB - and not the investment grade it had anticipated months earlier, as advanced by the Financial Times. It is worth clarifying what has changed and what has not. There is no downgrade from Moody's, S&P or Fitch: what has moved is the forecast of one of the financers. Anthropic received a BB+ as an issuer from KBRA last June, a rating that already placed it one notch below the investment grade threshold and which is not equivalent to those of the big three agencies. Rating agencies do not dictate how much a company is worth on the stock market. They evaluate, according to the definition used by S&P Global, 'the ability and willingness of borrowers to meet their financial commitments in full and on time.' Translated to Anthropic's case: they measure the risk of default, not the attractiveness of the business. It is hard to understand...
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On October 26, the investment group Blackstone announced together with Bank of America, Citi and Morgan Stanley a $63 billion transaction to finance the purchase of Broadcom equipment that will later be rented to the creator of Claude.
