Chinese developer Yango Group said on Monday it has launched an offer to exchange some of its US dollar bonds and wants the support of investors to change the terms of the remaining ones to improve its liquidity and avoid defaults.
Yango is offering $25 in cash and $1,000 in new notes for each $1,000 of existing bonds exchanged, it said in a statement to the Hong Kong bourse. The exchange offer applies to its US dollar notes due in February 2023, January 2022 and March 2022, which have an outstanding face value of $747 million.
The company said government policy tightening, credit events and deteriorating consumer sentiment had cut off refinancing avenues for property firms “and put enormous pressure on our short-term liquidity”.
It said the offer was part of “overall efforts to improve our liquidity, preserve options to stabilise our operations as a going concern, and avoid imminent payment defaults and potential holistic restructurings of our debts and business operations.”
Yango’s liquidity crunch comes against the backdrop of a crisis at China Evergrande Group, which has stoked concern among investors globally about the country’s deeply indebted, $5 trillion property sector and tightened funding access for other developers.
Evergrande narrowly avoided a catastrophic default for the second time in a week on Friday, making a last-minute payment on an overdue dollar bond coupon just before its grace period expired.
Yango’s shares in Shenzhen plunged more than 8% in morning trade on Monday. They have fallen by nearly a quarter in the past five sessions.
Yango has eight outstanding US dollar bonds worth a total $2.24 billion and 14 outstanding yuan-denominated bonds worth 13.1 billion yuan, according to Refinitiv data. Holders of the February 2023 notes, worth a total of $247 million, have the option to demand early repayment on November 12.
Its March 2022 bond slumped 13% on Monday, boosting its yield to nearly 750%, according to Duration Finance.
Adjust loans, PBoC tells banks
Meanwhile, China’s central bank branches have provided window guidance to local banks on property loans and told the local banks to conduct cross-region adjustments to property loans, a publication of the central bank said on Monday.
The central bank branches also told local lenders to keep total local property loan volumes stable, said Financial News, a newspaper affiliated with the People’s Bank of China.
• Reuters with additional editing by Jim Pollard
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