A construction worker at China Vanke Co.'s Isle Maison development in Hefei, China. - Bloomberg
HONG KONG: China Vanke said on Friday it aimed to boost its cashflow by slashing debt and lifting income from businesses other than property development as it sees continued margin pressure in 2024 and 2025 during a market correction.
Investors have been dumping shares and bonds of China's second-largest property developer by sales in the past few weeks on cashflow concerns, triggering a rare central government directive to help the Shenzhen-based company beat a liquidity crisis.
The state-backed developer on Thursday reported a 50.6% drop in 2023 core profit, which excludes the impact of foreign exchange and the change in the value of assets and financial instruments, to 9.8 billion yuan ($1.36 billion).
The company needed to act more like it was in crisis mode, Chairman Yu Liang said on an earnings call on Friday.
He said Vanke aimed to cut interest-bearing debt by 100 billion yuan over the next two years, after declaring no dividend for 2023 for the first time in an effort to preserve cash. It also hopes to boost earnings from businesses like property services, rental housing and logistics.
Vanke's shares in Shenzhen dropped as much as 3.8% on Friday morning to the lowest since October 2014.
The company said the Shenzhen state asset regulator was coordinating with several state-owned companies to help Vanke's cashflow, including on asset disposals and cooperation on projects. If all the plans are implemented, they would add more than 10 billion yuan of liquidity into the company, it said.
Vanke is also in talks with banks about financing, including syndicated loans. It has received new pledged loans totalling 10.9 billion yuan so far this year, and applied for development loans for 42 of its projects with a total of 17 billion yuan financing needs under China's "whitelist" support mechanism.
The company's financing "faces pressure, but we will overcome it," CEO Zhu Jiusheng said.
Zhu added there was also pressure on cashflow because banks now required Vanke to provide investment properties as collateral for new loans under a policy change, and many of its sales proceeds are kept in escrow accounts.
Eight of Vanke's directors and senior executives gave up their bonuses for 2023, according to the company's financial report, and both Yu and Zhu will receive a monthly salary of 10,000 yuan ($1,383.57) from Thursday.
Their total remuneration last year was 1.3 million yuan and 1.2 million yuan, respectively. ($1 = 7.2277 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Clare Jim; Editing by Jamie Freed)
