Moody's Investors Service has assigned a Ba2 corporate family rating to Sintex Industries, a diversified Indian manufacturing company. The outlook for the rating is stable. This is the first time Moody's has assigned a rating to Sintex.

The Ba2 rating reflects Sintex's diversified product mix and international customer base in textiles and plastic moulding and the solid margins and cash flow these activities generate.

Sintex is currently in the early stages to expand its yarn capacity in India. The funding mix for this project is likely to see leverage climb towards 4.5x-5.0x in the financial year ended Mar. 31, 2016 from the level of 3.9x at Mar. 31, 2014, although we expect leverage to level off to around 4.0x-4.5x thereafter.

The strength of Sintex is derived from its original Indian operations which produce a range of high-end fabrics, fibre reinforced mouldings and large size plastic mouldings including its well-known water tanks. Its products continue to focus on basic community needs which are often the focus of government projects and incentives, such as water supply, sewage treatment, pre-fabricated school and medical buildings and low cost housing where it has been a leader in adopting plastics technology to provide solutions and where it enjoys some pricing power. While plastics has been the core business for Sintex, its diversified manufacturing operations and servicing to wide range of end-user markets strengthens its positions.

Shares of the company declined Rs 1.85, or 1.55%, to trade at Rs 117.20. The total volume of shares traded was 421,872 at the BSE (12.27 p.m., Tuesday).