Troubled housing giant Country Garden announced late Thursday that it would delay the publication of its annual results, in the latest sign of the turmoil still coursing through China’s huge property sector. In a filing provided to the Hong Kong stock exchange, the company said it needed more time to collect information due to the complexity of the work required amid its debt restructuring.
The move is likely to cause its share trading to be suspended from Tuesday, as is required by Hong Kong’s listing rules. Hong Kong’s market was closed on Friday for the Easter holiday and will reopen on Tuesday.
Country Garden, once the China’s largest property developer, is reeling under about $194 billion worth of debt. It defaulted on its US dollar debt last year. Last month, it received a liquidation petition in Hong Kong from a creditor for non-payment of a loan worth 1.6 billion Hong Kong dollars ($204 million), according to the company.
Country Garden’s woes echo that of another huge, and now insolvent, Chinese property giant Evergrande.
It was a set of missed results from Evergrande back in 2021 and 2022 that first alerted investors to huge debts and stresses within China’s property sector, a moment that cascaded through multiple parts of the world’s second largest economy and continues to reverberate to this day.
Chinese regulators have since accused Evergrande and its founder of inflating revenues by $78 billion, putting the insolvent property developer at the heart of the country’s biggest ever financial fraud case.
