National Finance Company – National Ratings Upgraded

Capital Intelligence Ratings (CI Ratings or CI) today announced that it has upgraded the Long- and Short-Term issuer ratings on the Oman National Scale of National Finance Company SAOG (NFC) to ‘omA+’ and ‘omA1’, from ‘omA-’ and ‘omA2’, respectively. The Outlook on the ratings is revised to Stable from Positive.

The upgrade of NFC’s ratings is underpinned by the improving operating environment buoyed by sound economic growth and the positive effect on public finances of favourable oil prices, notwithstanding the recent decline in the latter. This in turn has contributed to the Company’s resilient financial metrics in 2023 and H1 24. Financing asset quality has been on a gently improving trend and sound debt metrics have been maintained. While earnings had come under some pressure from the higher interest rate environment, the anticipated lowering of financing rates going forward should be beneficial to the Company’s net financing margin (NFM) given its…