May 31, 2006. /Lesprom Network/. Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said on Tuesday, May 30 that its ratings and outlook on Appleton Papers Inc. (BB-/Stable/--) remain unchanged following the company's announcement on May 26 that it commenced a consent solicitation to change the incurrence test for permitted restricted payments and to allow modifications to the company's ESOP plan documentation under its bond indentures. The restricted payments amendment is required to avoid a technical default when Appleton funds its ESOP stock redemptions as required in June 2006 by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). Appleton remains very aggressively leveraged with debt, including capitalized operating leases and tax-effected pension and post-retirement obligations, to EBITDA of 4.8x at March 31, 2006. Even so, the company has sufficient liquidity to make the payments, and its financial profile is expected to gradually improve during 2006. As such, Standard & Poor's expects the bondholders to provide the required consents, allowing Appleton to remain in compliance with its financial covenants. Standard & Poor's will continue to monitor the status of the company's consent solicitation. Standard & Poor's is the world's foremost provider of independent credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research and data. Appleton is the world's largest producer of carbonless paper and the only producer of the NCR PAPER* brand of carbonless paper, a product Appleton helped introduce in 1954. Carbonless paper is used to make multipart business forms such as invoices, purchase orders and credit card receipts.