Image: Reuters
China Evergrande Group wired funds to a trustee account on October 21 for a bond interest payment due September 23, a source told Reuters on October 22, days before a deadline that would have plunged the embattled developer into formal default.
Shares of Evergrande, which is saddled with more than $ 300 billion in liabilities, rose as much as 8 percent early on October 22.
Here’s what people are saying about the world’s most indebted developer, whose fate could ripple through global markets.
Moh Siong Sim, Currency Analyst, Bank Of Singapore
“There is still a lot of scepticism. Bond prices have not picked up a lot. It’s a situation where they’ll try to keep it going until they can’t.
“What’s important is the property market, because they have a lot of projects under construction and the worst scenario would be if they go down and projects are left unfinished and that creates spillover for the economy. They have bought themselves some time.”
Gary Ng, Senior Economist, Natixis, Hong Kong
“That Evergrande is able to fulfil its obligation after the grace period on the offshore bond is positive at least in the short term as it shows a certain commitment from the firm and provides a relief for offshore bond investors.
“However, they still have a bunch of deadlines coming up before the end of March. To fulfil all the obligations and the bond coupon payments they still need liquidity either from themselves or from offloading assets. Even though Evergrande managed to repay the coupon this time, it’s still quite challenging for them to meet all their future obligations.”
Edwin Fan, Analyst, Fitch, Hong Kong
“Evergrande is still under grace period for coupon payment. We will continue monitor the company’s coupon payment and debt restructuring situation in the future.”
Travis Lundy, Quiddity Advisors Analyst, Hong Kong
“I expect it means they also plan to pay the offshore bond coupons due by the 29th. There’s no point in paying this one if you fully plan on not paying the next one six days later, but given the company’s self-reported cashflow difficulties, it is not clear how long they can keep that up.
“Given that we have little clarity on how bank financing is going for stalled real estate projects, but we know that project pre-sales are down a lot, the onshore business is unlikely to be supplying cash to Evergrande near-term. And I expect Hopson’s clarified response yesterday means lawsuits if Evergrande tries to sell Evergrande Property Services to someone else.”
Louise Tse, Managing Director, Wealthy Securities, Hong Kong
The Evergrande rebound on Friday is still small compared to how much the stock has lost in the past few months. People are seeing that this could be a positive for the property development sector on the credit side. But I think for Evergrande, the share price could be hamstrung in the near term, there is still a lot more upcoming interest payments that have to be met.
“Investors will still be cautious because this issue is not just about Evergrande, we are talking about the health of the whole Chinese property sector.”
