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A member of the Serbian special police force patrols the village of Lucane on a Ski-DooGORAN TOMASEVIC

One of the companies we keep expecting to see hit the headlines sooner or later is Bombardier Recreational Products, the Ski-Doo and jet ski maker that was sold by Bombardier Inc. to private equity interests for about $1-billion more than seven years ago.

Seven years is getting up there in private equity. That's about the time when private equity investors look to get their money back (and more) through a sale or an initial public offering. But there's no sign of a move on BRP, which may reflect the trouble the company has had coming out of the recession, given the fact that consumers are cutting back on spending and that its products, while a hoot to ride, are not exactly indispensable.

With BRP now private, in the hands of an investor group led by Bain Capital and the family that founded Bombardier , it's hard to get inside the company's results to figure out how it's doing.

However, a new rating by Standard & Poor's gives a sense of just what's going on at the company financially. There's good news and bad news for its ownership group. First, the bad news.

Revenue and profit aren't back to pre-recession levels, S&P said.

"BRP's revenue and profit both experienced sharp declines in the last economic cycle. While the company's revenue and EBITDA began improving in fiscal 2011 (ended Jan. 31), the increases were not nearly to the levels experienced before the recession," S&P said Tuesday.

Leverage still remains relatively high, with S&P saying that net debt to EBITDA could drop to four times in "the medium term." That's not huge, but it does mean that there's not a lot of room on the balance sheet for a lot more debt. That could limit the number of possible buyers for BRP and the price should Bain and its partners decide to sell, because it would have to be a relatively equity-heavy purchase.

Now the good news for the owners, if not so much for BRP's lenders. There is a potential for a "sizeable dividend" out of BRP, S&P said. That would enable the owners to extract cash without selling, as they did in 2006 with a large dividend recapitalization.

Bond investors and raters would be right to be leery. Last time, three years after the dividend, BRP was in default, according to another Standard & Poors report from earlier this year.

"We could lower the ratings if the company's financial flexibility weakens materially because of poor operating performance or sizeable dividends, resulting in adjusted debt to EBITDA above 6x. Given significant revenue volatility that can materially affect EBITDA, as well as the potential for a sizable dividend, we are not contemplating higher ratings in the next year."

BRP's corporate credit rating now stands at single-B from single-B-minus. S&P defines a company in the single-B rating category as "more vulnerable to adverse business, financial and economic conditions but currently has the capacity to meet financial commitments.

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