Top Story: S&P Downgrades American Seafoods, says ‘will have difficulty complying with financial covenants’ 

News Summary:  S&P downgraded American Seafoods corporate credit rating today to CCC+, meaning the company is vulnerable to any adverse change in business conditions. S&P also said ‘ASG will have difficulty complying with its financial covenants over the near term’ as its debt ratio is far above the norm for highly leveraged companies. ASG has a $125 million bond issue (original amount) that accrues interest of 15% per year, and this ballooning debt is one focus of S&P’s concerns. In our opinion, should the company default it would allow bond holders and lenders to force a restructuring of the company. S&P says debt holders would recover between 70 and 100% of their assets, depending on their loan terms. 

All indications are that the massive Fraser sockeye run will meet expectations. The latest meeting of the Fraser River Panel says the late run fish are in good shape, and they should be able to make an inseason projection this week. 

Wegmans is launching their own brand of Gulf Shrimp as part of a promotion over Labor Day with the Gulf Seafood Marketing Council. Each of the 84 Wegmans stores will showcase wild-caught shrimp, snapper, grouper and blue crab. Wegmans is the latest retailer the GSMC has teamed up with to promote Gulf seafood, and has had successful campaigns with Hy-Vee and H-E-B. 

The real situation with Western Pacific big-eye tuna is that it is being overfished, but that these problems are highly correctable if managers take action, says the ISSF. They are responding to doom and gloom propaganda saying bigeye is on the verge of collapse. In fact, the stock is in better shape than 2011, but is still facing unsustainably high fishing effort, due to lack of action by regulators. 

India wants to continue its expansion as a seafood exporter with its shrimp boom. MPEDA is setting an ambitious target to double export values within three years - and has pledged to supply high-quality specific pathogen free seed to farmers.

John Sackton, Editor And Publisher , Lexington, Massachusetts 

Seafood.com News 1-781-861-1441 

Email comments to jsackton@seafood.com

Subscription info: Seafood.com is a subscription service, published by Seafood.com and Urner Barry. Urner Barry's COMTELL subscribers receive Seafood.com news as part of their subscription package. Other companies and individuals need to subscribe to read our stories. If you or your company has not signed up yet, please consider doing so.

2014 Subscription prices for Seafood.com News are $26 monthly for a single user, $43 for 2-5 users, and $62 for 6-20 users. For questions about subscriptions or passwords, please Urner Barry at 1-800-932-0617, or subscribe on-line with a credit card by clicking the subscribe button.

Subscribe Here.