Altice International - comment

Everyone knew Altice International would pay the dividends to maintain its leverage between 4.0x and 4.5x. Moody’s downgrading their debt by one notch because of these distributions does seem a little strange. If this is the rating parameter, then Altice International should have never been upgraded in the first place.  The cash leakage of c. €500m does reduce the company's financial flexibility with Moody’s rightly pointing out the need to refinance the 2025 debt maturities at higher rates. But all of this was known beforehand!