By Clare Jim and Sneha Kumar
(Reuters) -Shanghai-based property developer Yuzhou Group said on Friday it plans to raise HK$112.2 million ($14.43 million) via a rights issue to settle the fees from its proposed offshore debt restructuring.
The company is also proposing to consolidate every ten previously issued shares into one share, and change the board lot size for trading from 1,000 existing shares to 5,000 consolidated shares, it said in a filing to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Shares of Yuzhou tumbled nearly 19% to HK$0.108 in early afternoon trading.
Yuzhou, one of the many property firms hurt by a slowdown in China’s real estate market, is close to completing restructuring its $6.7 billion of offshore debt.
The rights issue will be on the basis of 49 rights shares for every 100 existing shares at the subscription price of HK$0.035 per rights share, it said, representing a 73.7% discount to the Thursday closing price.
Yuzhou plans to issue up to 3.2 billion rights shares with Chairman and CEO Kwok Ying Lan and her husband Lam Lung On, a controlling shareholder, undertaking a total of 1.89 billion of the rights, worth around $8 million, the filing said.
In a separate filing to the exchange, Yuzhou also said it will issue 5.65 billion of existing shares to be exchanged with some creditors for their debt at HK$2.127 apiece as part of the restructuring.
The company said it would be appropriate to issue the shares so that the company could reduce the amount of outstanding indebtedness while allowing holders of the new shares to participate in the future returns when its business operations improve.
Yuzhou offered its restructuring plan in August 2023, a year after it defaulted on dollar bond payments.
China is presently trying to support the housing market by rolling out multiple incentives such as the recent fund boosts for housing projects.
($1 = 7.7743 Hong Kong dollars)
(Reporting by Sneha Kumar in Bengaluru and Clare Jim in Hong Kong; Additional reporting by Donny Kwok; Editing by Alan Barona and Christian Schmollinger)
