Companies' loan ratings: up or down? Mostly up.

What the chart shows

From February to September 2026, 265 listed companies had their loan rating raised and 81 had it cut: more than 3 raised for every 1 cut.

MONTH BY MONTH: companies raised, cut, and how many had rating news we read February: 24 raised, 13 cut, of 160 (178 had rating news; we could not read the rest) March: 29 raised, 16 cut, of 225 April: 23 raised, 12 cut, of 201 May: 26 raised, 10 cut, of 145 June: 32 raised, 11 cut, of 167 July: 58 raised, 15 cut, of 260 August: 47 raised, 8 cut, of 220 September: 58 raised, 9 cut, of 306

More companies were raised than cut in every one of the 8 months. A company raised in two different months is in both months, so the months add up to more than 265.

What a loan rating (credit rating) is: a grade a rating agency gives to how safely a company can repay what it borrows (bank loans, bonds, deposits). Raised means the agency now sees that borrowing as safer; cut means less safe. What it is not: a view on the share price, and not a recommendation. We count rating changes that companies filed, and name none.

How it is measured

A loan rating (credit rating) is a grade that a rating agency (such as CRISIL, ICRA, CARE or India Ratings) gives to how safely a company can repay what it borrows: its bank loans, bonds, commercial paper or deposits. Companies must tell the stock exchanges when a rating changes. This poster counts those filings from February to September 2026.

A filing counts as "raised" or "cut" only when our system tagged it as a rating upgrade or downgrade AND its one-line summary says the rating itself was upgraded or downgraded (or revised upward or downward, or cut, or it names the new grade as higher or lower than the old one). Set aside and counted: a change of outlook only, with the rating kept (14); a tagged filing whose summary names no upgrade or downgrade (129); ESG (sustainability) scores, which are not credit ratings (34); a subsidiary's or joint venture's rating (19); listed trusts (0); both an upgrade and a downgrade in one filing (0); no company attached (2). Each company counts once per direction per month, however many agencies or exchange filings there were; the same rating action filed again within 7 days in the next month is not counted again (1).

A company raised in two different months (usually by two different agencies) is in both months' columns but once in the total, so the columns add up to 297 raised and 94 cut against 265 and 81 different companies. No company was both raised and cut in the same month. Over the whole period 5 companies were raised at one point and cut at another.

Why from February 2026: in the months before, we could read only part of the rating filings in full (January 2026: 54% of companies), and a filing we cannot read carries no direction, so those months would undercount. In February we read 160 of 178 companies' rating news, so that month is undercounted. Before June 2026 most filings had no one-line subject, so the first sentence of the summary is read instead.

The grey number under each month is the companies whose rating news we read that month. A rating is about repaying loans. It is not a view on the share price and not a recommendation, and no company is named.

How this chart has read

The finding in one sentence, on each day its numbers changed.

1. 7 Oct 2026From February to September 2026, 265 listed companies had their loan rating raised and 81 had it cut: more than 3 raised for every 1 cut.
2. 6 Oct 2026From February to September 2026, 264 listed companies had their loan rating raised and 81 had it cut: more than 3 raised for every 1 cut.
3. 5 Oct 2026From February to September 2026, 264 listed companies had their loan rating raised and 79 had it cut: more than 3 raised for every 1 cut.
4. 4 Oct 2026From March to September 2026, 244 listed companies had their loan rating raised and 72 had it cut: more than 3 raised for every 1 cut.
5. 3 Oct 2026From March to September 2026, 243 listed companies had their loan rating raised and 72 had it cut: more than 3 raised for every 1 cut.
6. 2 Oct 2026From March to September 2026, 242 listed companies had their loan rating raised and 72 had it cut: more than 3 raised for every 1 cut.
7. 1 Oct 2026From March to September 2026, 241 listed companies had their loan rating raised and 70 had it cut: more than 3 raised for every 1 cut.
8. 30 Sept 2026From March to 29 September 2026, 233 listed companies had their loan rating raised and 68 had it cut: more than 3 raised for every 1 cut.

Using this chart