Frontier Shares Slide on Dividend Suspension; Moody's Downgrades Windstream, Uniti

at $7.03 Wednesday after its board suspended its quarterly cash dividend. "The suspension will make available an additional $250 million annually to accelerate debt reduction," said a release Tuesday. Windstream's downgrade was "based on the company's sustained weak operating trends and challenging debt maturity profile," said a Moody's release Wednesday. Moody's also downgraded the telco's "probability of default," "secured" and "unsecured" ratings, though it left unchanged a "speculative grade liquidity" rating, "reflecting good liquidity." The "outlook remains negative due to Moody's expectation of continued pressure on EBITDA, negative free cash flow including persistent restructuring costs, and low asset coverage relative to debt," it said. "Windstream faces large debt maturities of over $1 billion each in 2020 and 2021 and strong negative market sentiment that poses very high refinancing risk." The Windstream downgrade hit Uniti, another Moody's release said: "As Uniti's largest tenant and main source of revenue, Windstream's credit profile significantly influences the ratings and outlook of Uniti. ... . With only marginal revenue diversity, the business and credit risk at Windstream will weigh heavily on Uniti." Windstream and Uniti closed down 2.5 percent and 3.3 percent. Neither commented. Wireline telcos have been stressed from competition (see 1710220002).