Development Finance Limited

RATING DRIVERS

Supporting Factors:

• High credit quality of the bond’s underlying assets lends to stable and reliable cash flows for debt servicing
• Comfortable capitalisation reflected in strong capital adequacy ratios and low leverage
• Adequate financial performance with diversity of income and profitable operations
• Moderately diverse investment portfolio with good asset quality
• Stable and growing funding base, though small, adequately supports operations

Constraining Factors:

• Significant sovereign risk exposure compounded by heightened economic uncertainty

Rating Sensitivity Factors

Factors that could, individually, or collectively lead to an improvement in the ratings and /or outlook include:

• Improvement in the credit rating of the GORTT

Factors that could, individually, or collectively lead to a lowering of the ratings and/or outlook include:

• Material impairment in any of the underlying securities
• Substantial deterioration in the financial performance and position of DFL
• Downgrade in the rating of the GORTT
• Breaches to any of the bond’s covenants
• Breach of covenants related to other long-term borrowings including limits related to non-performing loans
• A fall in the bond’s security coverage to below 1.0x

Development Finance Limited (DFL or the Company) is a non-bank financial institution licensed in Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) under the Financial Institutions Act (2008) and is registered with the Deposit Insurance Corporation. The Company was initially established as the Trinidad and Tobago Development Finance Company (TTDFC) in the 1970s. DFL’s shareholders currently comprise primarily of the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago (GORTT) (49.75%) and the Maritime Financial Group (49.75%), through its subsidiaries, the Maritime General Insurance Company Limited (33.17%) and Maritime Life (Caribbean) Limited (16.58%). The remaining 0.5% is held by DFL Caribbean Holdings Limited.

DFL’s mandate is aimed at providing funding and project structure for all small, medium, or large corporations that are engaged in development activities that can benefit the growth of the T&T economy. From inception in the 1970’s, DFL’s core business was to provide financing for business development to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) locally. Since 2011 the Company has widened its product offering to include Merchant banking and FOREX services in addition to long-term commercial financing options. The Company’s products and services are offered through 6 main business lines which include debt arrangement and underwriting, buying and selling of foreign exchange, deposit-taking for fixed deposits, corporate and commercial lending for various financing needs, provision of guarantees, and letters of credit. DFL’s total assets stood at TT $610.1 million as at December 2020, and its total revenue for the year then ended was TT $20.6 million.

DFL is proposing to issue a Secured Fixed Rate bond in the amount of up to TT $150 million. The net proceeds of the issue will be used to fund loans and investments and for general corporate working capital purposes. The proposed bond will be issued in 4 tranches as follows:

                   Source: DFL

                   *Each tranche can go up to TT $70 million, however the total issue size will not exceed TT $150 million.

The bond will be fully secured by GORTT or GORTT-guaranteed bonds with the issued amount of each individual tranche secured by a pool of assets of equivalent value comprising of GORTT or GORTT guaranteed bonds. Further, the cash flows from the underlying bonds will be the primary source of repayment of principal and interest payments for the proposed bonds with DFL’s cashflows serving as a secondary source of repayment. Interest on all tranches is payable semi-annually with a bullet payment at maturity. Repayment funds will be established for each tranche into which the underlying GORTT and GORTT-guaranteed securities will be deposited. The deposited assets will be pledged to the Trustee who will maintain full control over the assets during the life of the bond. An asset will only be added or removed from the pool if it is called or prepaid by the issuer of the underlying security. Should there be such an event, the Trustee will repay the cash derived from the early repayment inclusive of any outstanding interest received to the bondholders. Republic Wealth Management Limited will serve as the Trustee and Paying Agent to manage all cashflows pertaining to the secured assets, including but not limited to the receipt of interest and principal payments from the underlying securities and payment of funds to investors.

DFL is a registered issuer with the Trinidad and Tobago Securities and Exchange Commission (TTSEC) and has successfully issued and repaid several Fixed Rate Tax-Exempt bonds in the T&T market in past years.

Analytical Contacts :

André Joseph

Tel: 1-868-627-8879 Ext. 224

Mobile: 1-868-788-4693

E-mail: [email protected]

Anelia Oudit

Tel: 1-868-627-8879 Ext. 226

Mobile: 1-868-487-8364

E-mail: [email protected]

Website: www.caricris.com

Email: [email protected]

Disclaimer: CariCRIS has taken due care and caution in compilation of data for this product. Information has been obtained by CariCRIS from sources which it considers reliable. However, CariCRIS does not guarantee the accuracy, adequacy or completeness of any information and is not responsible for any errors or omissions or for the results obtained from the use of such information. No part of this report may be published / reproduced in any form without CariCRIS’ prior written approval. CariCRIS is also not responsible for any errors in transmission and especially states that it has no financial liability whatsoever to the subscribers/ users/ transmitters/ distributors of this product.