Embattled Kaisa Group Holdings said its Hong Kong-listed shares could resume trading in March after almost a year of suspension prompted by the company’s failure to publish its 2021 accounts on time. The cash-strapped Chinese property developer said in a statement on Monday that it is now finalising the audit of the results for 2021 as well as those for the first half of 2022. The auditor has also started reviewing the results for the whole of 2022. “The company will strive to fulfil all the conditions and resume trading in its shares in March 2023,” Kaisa Group said in the statement. Its stock price has been frozen at HK$0.84 since April last year, having lost two thirds of its market value. Trading in shares of the troubled developer had already been halted twice in late 2021 after it missed a payment on a 12.8 billion yuan (US$1.89 billion) wealth management product in November and a loan repayment of US$400 million in December. Kaisa has said it is working on a restructuring plan for its US$12 billion of offshore debt with its financial adviser and creditors, who include holders of the US dollar denominated senior notes that it issued. The company is “in the process of evaluating the capital structure and liquidity of the group so that a holistic solution could be reached with all of its offshore creditors as soon as practicable,” it said in a statement on January 10. This month, Hong Kong investment firm Oasis Capital Management sued Kaisa for failing to pay US$90 million on four bonds and US$12.3 million in interest. The US$90 million worth of unsecured notes matured in 2022. Kaisa has pledged to monitor the progress of its project delivery and to control administrative costs and capital expenditure to stay afloat. It is the second-largest issuer of offshore bonds among Chinese developers after China Evergrande, and it became the first developer to default on dollar debt in 2015. Who will take on China’s biggest economic challenges? It has been on a selling spree to raise capital. In July last year, Kaisa’s vice-chairman and chief executive Mai Fan sold his 3,953 square-foot luxury home in Hong Kong for HK$300 million (US$38.3 million), a loss of HK$50 million from the purchase price in 2017. The deal came shortly after it sold the entire 38th floor of The Centre, an office tower in Hong Kong’s Central district, for HK$186.4 million in December 2021, and auctioned off 18 property projects covering 1.45 million square metres in Shenzhen for 81.82 billion yuan. Kaisa sold a project on the site of Hong Kong’s former Kai Tak airport for HK$1.9 billion in cash and HK$6 billion in assumed debt in November 2021. The Chinese government is formulating a plan to help developers deemed “good quality” with 450 billion yuan in financing and debt extensions. While no specific names have been revealed yet, state news agency Xinhua said regulators will ease the “three red lines” borrowing restrictions on 30 pilot property firms. The three red lines policy, rolled out in August 2021, restricts the amount of new borrowing property developers can raise each year by placing caps on their debt ratios. It is seen as a major force that helped push many Chinese developers off the cliff.
