Country Garden seeks to extend bond payments

Country Garden Holdings is pushing back some onshore bond payments to later dates despite a round of extensions last year, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring the financial stress at the mainland developer.

The company’s main onshore unit planned to extend coupon and principal instalment payments for a yuan bond maturing in March 2026 to September after missing a 96 million yuan (HK$102 million) coupon payment on March 12, before a 30-day grace period kicked in, the people said.

The developer also wanted to extend coupon and principal instalment payments for a yuan bond maturing in June 2026 to September, they said, asking not to be identified. It planned the same for a yuan bond maturing in December 2026, they added.

Country Garden did not immediately comment when contacted on Tuesday.

The firm has become one of the biggest casualties of the nation’s property crisis that has seen the demise of the likes of China Evergrande Group.

New home prices had weakened every month since last May across major cities, a government report this week showed. China’s top 100 developers recorded combined sales of 779.2 billion yuan in the first quarter of the year, a 47.5 per cent decline from a year earlier, according to data compiled by China Real Estate Information Corporation.

Country Garden’s strains are piling up, with home sales slumping by 83 per cent last month, exacerbating its cash crunch. It recently warned it would miss a deadline for reporting annual results, causing its shares to be suspended from trading in Hong Kong. They last traded at 48.5 HK cents on April 2, capping a 38 per cent slide this year.

The developer is fighting a winding-up petition filed by a creditor in a Hong Kong court. The first hearing is scheduled for May 17.