By Clare Jim
HONG KONG (Reuters) -State-backed China Vanke said on Tuesday the funding for repaying its dollar notes due on March 11 is in place, amid more selling pressure on its bonds as concern mounts over liquidity at the Chinese developer.
China’s No.2 property developer by sales said in a statement to Reuters that the repayment process for the $630 million bond was “orderly”.
China Vanke’s 2029 dollar bonds were earlier bid at 39.045 cents on the dollar in Asia morning hours, dropping more than 6.7 cents from Monday, data from Duration Finance showed. Bids for its 2027 bonds dropped more than 5 cents to 48.135 cents.
The firm’s onshore bonds also eased, with a bond due March 2025 dropping 4%.
Vanke’s Hong Kong-listed shares fell as much as 3.9% to a record low of HK$5.38, on course for a seventh straight session of decline. Its Shenzhen-listed shares eased more than 1%.
A string of Chinese developers have defaulted since the sector slipped into a debt crisis in mid-2021, including giants China Evergrande Group and Country Garden.
Liquidity concerns over Vanke, previously seen by the market as financially sound, swirled last week after reports that it was seeking debt maturity extensions with some insurers.
Any repayment trouble at Vanke, one of few remaining Chinese developers with investment grade credit ratings, could further hamper market confidence, analysts said.
Moody’s has already downgraded some of Vanke’s bonds to “junk” in November, and if another rating agency, either S&P or Fitch, follows suit, those bonds would face the prospect of being dumped out of some of the world’s most important investment indexes.
China has struggled to contain the debt crisis despite rounds of measures to boost home sales and add liquidity into the developers.
China will refine real estate policies and meet justified financing demand for real estate enterprises under various forms of ownership on an equal basis in 2024, according to an official work report seen by Reuters on Tuesday.
(Reporting by Clare Jim; Editing by Himani Sarkar and Stephen Coates)
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