OREANDA-NEWS. S&P Global Ratings today assigned its 'BBB-' issue-level rating to the proposed senior unsecured notes due to be issued by Shire Acquisitions Investments Ireland DAC (the Company) and guaranteed by Ireland-headquartered biopharmaceutical company Shire PLC.

The Company expects to raise up to $12.0 billion of senior unsecured notes and use the net proceeds to repay a $13.0 billion term loan facility, maturing on Jan. 11, 2017, that was put in place to finance the acquisition of Baxalta Inc.

Shire PLC also acts as guarantor on Baxalta's $5.0 billion outstanding senior unsecured notes and on about $5.6 billion outstanding senior unsecured term facilities due in November 2015 raised by the Company. In addition, Shire PLC has an unsecured revolving credit facility of $2.1 billion (of which $905 million was drawn as at June 30, 2016) guaranteed by the Company.

We expect Shire's leverage to be about 4x in 2016 and about 3x-3.4x in 2017, supported by EBITDA margins above 40%. We anticipate around 8%-10% revenue growth for the combined entity over the next three years, reflecting the strongly performing Vyvanse and recently acquired products of NPS Pharma, and the stable performance of Baxalta's current product portfolio.