S&P Warns of Tech Company Credit Rating Declines If Chinese Tariffs Rise to 30%

S&P Global Ratings is “fairly confident” that tech manufacturers Flex and Jabil “could manage their metrics to preserve” their current “BBB-“ ratings if the List 4 Section 301 tariffs stay at 15 percent, the financial analytics firm said Sept. 13. But in a 30 percent tariff “scenario,” as the first three tariff rounds are scheduled to rise to Oct. 15, the potential EBITDA declines “could prove to be too severe” for either company to avoid a ratings downgrade, S&P said. "Flex and Jabil could be the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to the effects of another round of tariffs on the technology hardware sector," S&P said in a news release. Before any downgrade, “we would consider each company's tariff mitigation and balance sheet management strategies,” it said. “If we believed credit metrics were likely to exceed our downgrade thresholds over a 24 month period, we could lower the ratings.” It estimates that goods representing 6 percent to 9 percent of Flex's revenues and 12 percent to 17 percent of Jabil's sales will have exposure to the four rounds of tariffs, it said. “Neither company discloses these figures so we estimated them based on a review of revenue by geography for each of the customers they name in their annual reports,” it said. Jabil’s largest customer, Apple, draws 37 percent of its revenue from U.S. sales, it said. For Flex, the largest customer is Ford, which draws 61 percent of revenue from the U.S., it said. In fiscal 2019 ended March 31, 25 percent of Flex revenue came from manufacturing operations in China, it said. It estimates that Jabil derives 40 percent to 50 percent of its revenue from Chinese production, it said. Flex and Jabil didn’t comment.