China Evergrande Group missed paying bond interest due on Wednesday, two bondholders said, its second unpaid offshore debt payment in a week, although the cash-strapped company is scrambling to meet its obligations in its home market.
The company, reeling under a debt pile of $305 billion, was due on Wednesday to make a $47.5 million bond interest payment on its 9.5% March 2024 dollar bond, after having missed $83.5 million in coupon payments last Thursday.
With liabilities equal to 2% of China’s GDP, Evergrande has sparked concerns its woes could spread through the financial system and reverberate around the world, though worries have eased somewhat after the central bank vowed to protect homebuyers’ interests.
The developer’s silence on its offshore payment obligations has, however, left global investors wondering if they will have to swallow large losses when 30-day grace periods end for coupons that were due on Sept. 23 and Sept. 29.
Some offshore Evergrande bondholders had neither received interest payments nor any communication by the end of Wednesday New York time, said the people familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified due to sensitivity of the issue.
A spokesperson for Evergrande did not have any immediate comment. Reuters was unable to determine whether Evergrande has told bondholders what it plans to do regarding the coupon payment due on Wednesday.
The two missed offshore payments come as the company, which has nearly $20 billion in offshore debt, faces deadlines on dollar bond coupon payments totalling $162.38 million in the next month.
1:36 Stocks find some footing after Evergrande relief as Beijing residents say company’s woes won’t hurt wider economy
Stocks find some footing after Evergrande relief as Beijing residents say company’s woes won’t hurt wider economy – Sep 22, 2021
Once China’s top-selling developer, Evergrande is now expected to be one of the largest-ever restructurings in the country. It has been prioritising its onshore liabilities amid concerns about its troubles triggering social unrest.
“I can’t see there being much willingness to give a fairer outcome to offshore bondholders rather than onshore banks, let alone house buyers and people who have lent onshore through the personal loan structures,” said Alexander Aitken, a partner at Herbert Smith Freehills in Hong Kong.
“Of course legally there is also structural subordination from being offshore, which means lenders to Evergrande’s onshore subsidiaries get paid before lenders to the parent company or any offshore debt issuer.”
Construction resumption
Beijing is unlikely to intervene directly to resolve Evergrande’s crisis in the form of a bailout, but analysts say it is wary of a messy collapse that could fuel unrest by local investors, suppliers and homebuyers.
Authorities have in recent days prodded government-owned firms and state-backed property developers to purchase some Evergrande assets to reduce such risks.
Some instant messaging groups used by people owed money by Evergrande to organize protests and discuss claims have been blocked on Tencent Holdings’ WeChat platform, group members said on Wednesday.
Evergrande said on Wednesday that it would sell a 9.99 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) stake it owns in Shengjing Bank Co Ltd to a state-owned asset management company.
The bank, one of Evergrande’s main lenders, demanded all net proceeds from the sale go towards settling the developer’s debts with Shengjing, which had 7 billion yuan in loans to Evergrande as of the first half last year.
1:07 Evergrande sell-off putting pressure on Chinese developers: analyst
Evergrande sell-off putting pressure on Chinese developers: analyst – Sep 21, 2021
Separately, Evergrande’s Pearl River Delta business said in a WeChat post on Tuesday that nearly 20 developments in the area have resumed construction. The post showed construction photos of various sites, and said that work resumption had accelerated since Evergrande vowed at the beginning of the month to deliver homes to buyers.
Its main onshore unit Hengda Real Estate Group announced a resolution of an onshore bond coupon payment on Sept. 23 through “private negotiations”.
Evergrande’s shares opened sharply higher on Thursday, rising as much as 5.21% before reversing course to slump as much as 7.17%. The stock was down 5% in afternoon trade.
“Regardless of how the debt is restructured, Evergrande shareholders and investors in offshore, USD-denominated corporate bonds will suffer large losses,” said Jing Sima, chief China strategist at BCA Research in a note.
(Reporting by Anne Marie Roantree, Clare Jim, Alun John and Donny Kwok in Hong Kong, Xiao Han in Beijing, Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai; Writing by Sumeet Chatterjee; Editing by Christopher Cushing, Gerry Doyle and Kim Coghill)
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
