The Washington Post recently named Liberty University as one of nine out of 509 U.S. higher education institutions to receive a credit upgrade from Moody’s Investors Service in the past year. The article, “In Moody’s U.S. college credit ratings, downgrades far outnumber upgrades,” mentions Liberty’s recent upgrade as an outlier to the “continuing financial fragility in higher education.”
In September 2013, Moody’s Investors Service upgraded Liberty’s bond rating from A1 to Aa3. In the report, Moody’s attributes the upgrade to “remarkable momentum in revenue growth and cash flow from operations,” which, if continued, it said “will produce sufficient cash to fund transformative capital investments as well as to build reserves over time. The growth in revenue and cash and investments makes Liberty a true outlier in Moody’s portfolio of not-for-profit universities,” it reads.
Liberty was the only university in Virginia to receive an upgrade in the past year. The rating is based on five factors: market position, operating performance, balance sheet and capital investment, governance and management, legal security and debt structure.