Our reporter Wang Lixin

  Since June last year, hundreds of billion-dollar housing companies such as Blu-ray Development and China Fortune Land Development have defaulted on their debts one after another. This housing company's self-rescue battle has lasted for more than half a year.

Since December last year, RRR cuts, interest rate cuts, and M&A loans have been launched to speed up the clearing of real estate enterprise risks... A series of policies to steadily resolve the real estate "grey rhino" risks have been implemented one after another.

  However, the liquidity of housing companies remains tight.

According to the monitoring of the China Index Research Institute, in January 2022, the total financing of real estate enterprises was 79.22 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 70.3% and a month-on-month decrease of 16.6%. The monthly financing scale decreased for 11 consecutive months.

At the beginning of 2022, the financing of the real estate industry has not been significantly relaxed.

  "2022 is the peak year for debt repayment. In the past January, the gap in debt funds due to housing companies was 57 billion yuan. Combined with the downturn in the sales market, housing companies need to seek new breakthroughs in financing." Pan Hao, senior analyst at Shell Research Institute According to a reporter from Securities Daily, from the perspective of the bond issuance structure of real estate companies in the beginning of the year, overseas bonds continue to be low, and domestic bond financing is currently the mainstay, but M&A loans have appeared and may become a new trend throughout the year.

  The scale of financing in the first month fell by 70%

  The beginning of the year has always been a key node for housing companies to raise money.

As we all know, financing for grain storage at the beginning of the year, and investing in land before the second quarter, with the current high turnover capacity of real estate companies, the newly added land can be converted into sales performance in the same year.

This can be seen from the scale of financing in the first month of the past three years.

  According to the monitoring data of the Middle Finger Research Institute, from 2019 to 2021, in January each year, the total financing of housing enterprises was 282.33 billion yuan, 224.67 billion yuan and 266.46 billion yuan, accounting for 12.2% and 9.4% of the total annual financing respectively. % and 15.1%.

In January 2022, it was 79.22 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 70%.

  "The financing situation of real estate companies in January is very important for the whole year. However, the total amount of financing in January this year was less than one-third of that of the previous year, which continued the weak trend in the fourth quarter of last year and failed to form a good start." Chen Xing, deputy director of research of the enterprise division of the research institute, told the "Securities Daily" reporter that the overseas debts and trusts of many real estate companies could not be paid on time, and the weakened solvency caused investors to be more cautious, which was the main factor for the sharp decline in total financing. .

  It is worth noting that, from the perspective of historical financing paths, January was originally a month for the concentrated issuance of overseas bonds, but the financing in that month was less than 10 billion yuan, and the financing capacity of overseas bonds is difficult to recover in the short term, indicating that the overseas bond market is still waiting and watching. Confidence has not been fully repaired.

In terms of publicly issued overseas bonds, Greentown China issued the lowest interest rate of credit enhancement bonds at 2.3%, Shangkun Real Estate has the highest at 13.5%, and Country Garden has the largest single financing scale of HK$3.9 billion.

  It is worth mentioning that although overseas bonds remain in the doldrums, there are still 5 real estate companies whose exchange offers have been approved, and the bonds were successfully extended before the maturity date, avoiding the risk of default. The quality and operating ability are recognized to a certain extent, and it is believed that it can relieve the liquidity pressure in a certain period of time in the future.

  "In the first month of this year, both domestic and overseas bond issuances showed a decline in terms of maturity, that is, short-term bonds were the main ones. The proportion of short-term bonds in domestic bonds rose to 29% within one year; 8 of the 10 new overseas bonds were issued within one year. short-term bonds." Pan Hao said that the shortening of the bond issuance cycle is a sign of insufficient market confidence.

  The scale of bonds due during the year is nearly one trillion yuan

  Overseas bond issuance is difficult to get out of the "default" haze in the short term, and real estate companies still need to face the debt repayment peak in March and April this year.

  Monitoring data from the Shell Research Institute shows that 2022 is still the peak year for real estate companies to repay their debts. The total amount of bonds due during the year is close to one trillion yuan, of which the scale of debts due in January, March, April and July all exceeded one hundred billion yuan. According to the current average monthly bond issuance scale of 50 billion yuan, housing companies are still under great pressure to repay their debts. Combined with the downturn in the sales market, housing companies need to break through the traditional model of borrowing new and repaying old, and seek more dimensional financing channels and methods. .

  However, a reporter from "Securities Daily" has previously received confirmation from a number of housing companies that M&A loans can be excluded from the "three red lines" financing restrictions, which will prompt some high-quality housing companies to increase their acquisition efforts.

  In January 2022, China Merchants Shekou and C&D Inc. issued M&A bonds of 1.29 billion yuan and 1 billion yuan respectively, indicating that policies on promoting M&A financing have been implemented at the level of central enterprises and local state-owned enterprises.

At the same time, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank also successfully issued the first M&A subject bond, which is mainly used for the issuance of M&A loans.

Combined with the policy orientation, it can be inferred that M&A financing will become a new financing channel for high-quality housing enterprises.

  On February 3, some media reported that Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, China Merchants Bank, China Guangfa Bank and other banks stated that they would provide real estate M&A financing support, including M&A-themed bonds, M&A loans, M&A funds, asset securitization, etc. It is expected to provide M&A support. Financing support exceeds 30 billion yuan.

  In this regard, a number of industry insiders told the "Securities Daily" reporter that M&A loans can alleviate the liquidity pressure of real estate companies to a certain extent, which is conducive to preventing risks in the real estate field.

However, Chen Xing believes, "For M&A financiers, their own debt repayment pressure is not great, and their financing purpose is M&A rather than debt repayment, so there is no problem of alleviating debt repayment pressure."

  Chen Xing further stated that for housing companies that sell projects, they urgently need to sell projects to repay their debts, but the premise of “high-quality projects” limits the characteristics of asset disposal.

For housing companies with high debt pressure and low-quality saleable assets, other sources of funds need to be expanded.

(Securities Daily)