[ET Net News Agency, 29 November 2019] S&P Global Ratings today revised its outlook on
the long-term ratings on Huatai Securities Co. Ltd. (HTSC)(06886) and its core subsidiary,
Huatai International Financial Holdings Co. Ltd. (HTIF), to positive from stable.
At the same time, the credit rating agency affirmed its 'BBB' long-term and 'A-2'
short-term issuer credit ratings on both companies. S&P also affirmed the 'BBB' long-term
issue rating on the senior unsecured debt guaranteed by HTSC.
HTSC is a China-based securities firm and HTIF is its Hong Kong-based subsidiary.
The outlook revision reflects S&P's view that HTSC's capital raising actions and new
investment trading plan could enhance its capitalization sustainably. Such an improvement
could bring HTSC's risk-adjusted capital (RAC) ratio to sustainably above 15%, S&P's
upgrade threshold.
As of 30 June 2019, the company's RAC ratio was 17.2%. However, the agency considers the
capital raising actions as one-time events and the track record for the new trading
strategy as still relatively short, and S&P therefore maintained its base-case scenario
that it expects its RAC ratio for HTSC to be mostly below 15%. (KL)