Shares in troubled Chinese property giant Evergrande Group (恆大集團) yesterday plummeted nearly 80 percent in Hong Kong after the lifting of a 17-month trading suspension.
The resumption of trading came after the company said in a filing on Friday that it had met guidelines set out by the bourse, including belatedly publishing its financial results and complying with other listing rules.
Once China’s largest real-estate firm, Evergrande defaulted in 2021 and is saddled with more than US$300 billion in liabilities, becoming a symbol of the nationwide property crisis that many fear could spill over globally.
Photo: AFP
Its shares plunged as much as 87 percent during morning trading, slashing its market value from a peak of more than US$50 billion in 2017 to less than US$600 million. It finished the day down 79.4 percent.
The company on Sunday reported fresh losses for the first half of this year amounting to 33 billion yuan (US$4.5 billion) — an improvement on the 66.4 billion yuan in losses reported in the same period last year.
However, its cash assets fell from US$2 billion last year to US$556 million, reflecting its dwindling liquidity.
China’s property market “cooled down significantly” in the first six months of this year and saw new defaults in the sector, “further exacerbating the volatility in the market,” Evergrande said.
“Based on the principles of respecting international restructuring practices and treating the rights and claims of all creditors in a fair and equitable manner, the company steadily pushed forward the work related to the restructuring of its offshore debts,” it said.
In March last year, the Hong Kong stock exchange suspended trading in Evergrande shares after the company failed to publish its 2021 financial results.
Its results for 2021 and last year were published last month, showing a net loss of more than US$113 billion over the two-year period.
Under Hong Kong stock exchange rules, the company risked being delisted if its shares were suspended from trading for 18 months.
Evergrande was supposed to hold creditor meetings yesterday on its offshore debt restructuring proposal, but it announced in the afternoon that the meetings were delayed — just hours before they were set to take place.
The postponement of roughly one month would enable creditors to “consider, understand and evaluate” the plan, the company said in an exchange filing.
The meetings would take place on Sept. 25 or 26, which the developer said was “in line” with the timetable creditors expected.
Evergrande’s plan offers creditors a choice to swap their debt into new notes issued by the company and equities in two subsidiaries, Evergrande Property Services Group Ltd (恒大物業) and Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group Ltd (恆大新能源汽車).
When an apartment comes up for rent in Germany’s big cities, hundreds of prospective tenants often queue down the street to view it, but the acute shortage of affordable housing is getting scant attention ahead of today’s snap general election. “Housing is one of the main problems for people, but nobody talks about it, nobody takes it seriously,” said Andreas Ibel, president of Build Europe, an association representing housing developers. Migration and the sluggish economy top the list of voters’ concerns, but analysts say housing policy fails to break through as returns on investment take time to register, making the
‘SILVER LINING’: Although the news caused TSMC to fall on the local market, an analyst said that as tariffs are not set to go into effect until April, there is still time for negotiations US President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he would likely impose tariffs on semiconductor, automobile and pharmaceutical imports of about 25 percent, with an announcement coming as soon as April 2 in a move that would represent a dramatic widening of the US leader’s trade war. “I probably will tell you that on April 2, but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25 percent,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago club when asked about his plan for auto tariffs. Asked about similar levies on pharmaceutical drugs and semiconductors, the president said that “it’ll be 25 percent and higher, and it’ll
CHIP BOOM: Revenue for the semiconductor industry is set to reach US$1 trillion by 2032, opening up opportunities for the chip pacakging and testing company, it said ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光投控), the world’s largest provider of outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) services, yesterday launched a new advanced manufacturing facility in Penang, Malaysia, aiming to meet growing demand for emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The US$300 million facility is a critical step in expanding ASE’s global footprint, offering an alternative for customers from the US, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China to assemble and test chips outside of Taiwan amid efforts to diversify supply chains. The plant, the company’s fifth in Malaysia, is part of a strategic expansion plan that would more than triple
Taiwanese artificial intelligence (AI) server makers are expected to make major investments in Texas in May after US President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office and amid his rising tariff threats, Taiwan Electrical and Electronic Manufacturers’ Association (TEEMA, 台灣電子電機公會) chairman Richard Lee (李詩欽) said yesterday. The association led a delegation of seven AI server manufacturers to Washington, as well as the US states of California, Texas and New Mexico, to discuss land and tax issues, as Taiwanese firms speed up their production plans in the US with many of them seeing Texas as their top option for investment, Lee said. The
RSS