101October 20th, Commissioner the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Liu He, Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China said that there are some problems in the real estate market, but the risks are generally controllable, and the reasonable capital demand is being met, and the overall situation of the healthy development of the real estate market will not change.
On the other hand, China Yi Huiman, Chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission said that it is necessary to resolutely curb excessive debt financing from the source, strengthen unified law enforcement in the bond market, and properly handle the default risk in the bond market.
This may mean that under the premise of maintaining the healthy development of real estate, it is unrealistic for the industry to expect too much from the "big water release". Even so, if marginal relaxation can be achieved, it can still alleviate the tension of the capital chain to some extent for real estate.
The current real estate supervision system has gradually linked the borrowing capacity with its leverage ratio, which has led many enterprises to fall into financing difficulties. More than one real estate executive told Viewpoint Real Estate New Media that real estate is basically borrowed from the old, and there is no increase in the quota between the exchange and the bank, not to mention that the declared issuance quota cannot exceed 85% of the bonds to be repaid.
Judging from the financing situation, housing enterprises including Ocean Shipping, Financial Street, Country Garden and Xuhui are still issuing credit bonds in the near future, but this cannot hide the downward trend of overall financing in the industry. According to the statistics of market research institutions, in the first three quarters of this year, the domestic and overseas bond financing of housing enterprises was about 768.9 billion yuan, down 2 1% year-on-year, and the decline rate was 5 points higher than that in the first half of this year.
Before the industry inflection point signal appeared, housing enterprises still waited patiently.
Audit supervision
In the direct financing channel of real estate, corporate bonds account for a considerable proportion. Wind statistics show that as of June 65438+ 10/8, the scale of domestic credit bonds issued by housing enterprises was about 530.239 billion yuan, compared with 68 1 137 billion yuan last year. Among them, general corporate bonds accounted for 20,965,438+72 million yuan, compared with 21065,438+1ten thousand yuan last year.
The above-mentioned level of corporate bonds has increased significantly compared with a few years ago, mainly because corporate bonds have changed from the previous approval system to the registration system.
For example, in May, 20 17, the Shanghai Stock Exchange issued the Supervision Scheme for Corporate Bonds in the Real Estate Industry (Trial), which improved the entry threshold and classified management of corporate bonds of real estate enterprises, including domestic and foreign listed real estate enterprises, real estate central enterprises, and other private unlisted real estate enterprises before the ranking of China Housing Association 100. Requirements are put forward for total assets, income, non-net profit deduction and asset-liability ratio after deducting advance accounts.
By March 2020, the corporate bonds will be registered, the public offering of corporate bonds will be audited by the Exchange and registered by the China Securities Regulatory Commission. At the same time, the conditions for issuing corporate bonds such as "the minimum net assets of the company" and "the accumulated bond balance does not exceed 40% of the company's net assets" have been deleted. In February this year, the CSRC further cancelled the mandatory rating requirements for public offering of corporate bonds.
The registration system shortens the bond issuance cycle, simplifies the examination and approval criteria, and increases the feasibility of housing financing. Wind statistics show that in 20 19, the general corporate bonds issued by real estate enterprises in China were about161187 million yuan, only equivalent to 77% in 2020.
However, from the individual feelings of enterprises, the situation may be more severe. According to incomplete statistics of opinion real estate new media, as of165438 on October 20th, the total corporate bonds that mainstream real estate enterprises applied for registration with the CSRC and were approved during the year were about 17803 1000 billion yuan, including158 billion yuan in the first half of the year, including Country Garden. In the second half of the year, it was less than 20 billion yuan, and the largest was Shimao's 6.638 billion yuan. The amount of approval varied greatly.
According to the general regulations, enterprises can apply for the registration of corporate bonds by stages, and the first stage will be completed within 65,438+02 months from the date of consent to registration, and the remaining stages will be 24 months.
Through this regulation, many housing enterprises actually issue corporate bonds this year with the amount approved in 2020. For example, Sunshine City registered 8 billion yuan of bonds in 2020, which was issued to the fourth issue in July this year, and the rest has not yet been issued.
For debt issuance and bill financing, the executives of the interviewed real estate enterprises all told the new media of Viewpoint Real Estate that the overall debt issuance is not difficult. A senior real estate enterprise in South China, who asked not to be named, acquiesced in the statement that financing channels were tightened; A state-owned housing enterprise successfully issued corporate bonds in the first half of the year. The company's senior management said that although the regulatory authorities still approve the real estate enterprises to issue corporate bonds, the audit is at a "strict" level.
Beijing Ocean Shipping Group, a real estate enterprise, previously mentioned the relevant restrictive policies on financing of real estate enterprises. The company pointed out that in terms of credit financing, commercial banks can only issue loans to real estate enterprises on the basis of meeting certain preconditions, and the form and use of loans should also meet the relevant requirements.
It went on to say that at this stage, housing enterprises also need to meet the additional approval requirements of relevant regulatory authorities through financing channels such as issuing stocks and bonds.
Take Shanghai Stock Exchange as an example. On April 22nd this year, the Exchange issued the "Guidelines for the Application of the Auditing Rules for the Issuance and Listing of Corporate Bonds in Shanghai Stock Exchange No.3-Key Issues of Auditing".
According to the Guidelines, the Shanghai Stock Exchange will focus on whether the issuer is an investment-holding issuer with a "weak mother", whether there are situations that need attention, such as credit rating downgrade and debt default records, and the information disclosure requirements for specific types of issuers such as urban construction enterprises and real estate enterprises are particularly clear.
101On October 20th, Yi Huiman, Chairman of China Securities Regulatory Commission also expressed his views on the reform of the registration system. Yi Huiman said that the regulatory authorities have always stressed that the registration system does not mean relaxing the audit requirements, and the authenticity, accuracy and integrity of information disclosure must be strictly controlled to improve the quality of listed companies from the source. He also stressed that it is necessary to deeply understand the "duality" of capital and strictly control the "entrance" of the capital market.
Approval requirements
Real estate is one of the main destinations of capital flow, and the industry has been under control in the past few years. From the perspective of issuing bonds, in 20 15, the CSRC relaxed the domestic financing conditions of housing enterprises and agreed in principle that red-chip companies would issue medium-term notes, short-term financing bonds and corporate bonds in China; The following year, the Exchange requires three types of supervision over housing enterprises, and the funds raised by corporate bonds shall not be used to purchase land.
The above two policies, together with the regulatory policy on the classification of corporate bonds in real estate from 2065438 to May 2007, made the direct financing of real estate enterprises encounter a roller coaster course of first promoting and then restraining. The new media of Viewpoint Real Estate reported that a 20 billion yuan corporate bond project that Country Garden applied for public offering was suspended twice from 20 16 to 20 18.
Compared with the previous regulation, in August 2020, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development and the central bank made clear the detailed rules for fund monitoring and financing management of key housing enterprises, which had a far-reaching impact. With the introduction of the "three red lines" policy, the financing restrictions of housing enterprises have been continuously tightened, which is called "the end of the financial dividend era" by Yu Liang.
A senior official of a state-owned real estate enterprise told Viewpoint Real Estate New Media that for a long time, the issuance of bonds by real estate enterprises has basically been to borrow the new and repay the old, and an additional approval requirement of the regulatory authorities since the "three red lines" is mainly related to the "15% discount" guided by the window.
"15% discount" is the abbreviation of repayment ratio of due debts. In fact, last year, on 1 October 27th and 165438, the Shanghai Stock Exchange issued the "Guidelines for the Application of the Audit Rules for the Issuance and Listing of Corporate Bonds in Shanghai Stock ExchangeNo.1-Application Documents and Compilation", which clearly took 10 as the node, and the amount of corporate bonds accepted after this node should not exceed the amount to be repaid.
By the end of April this year, the Shanghai Stock Exchange had revised the Guidelines, deleted the relevant expression dated 10 in August last year, and extended the limited scope of "15% discount" to all corporate bonds declared by real estate enterprises.
In practice, the upper limit of "15% discount" may not be touched. For example, Sunshine City issued a new debt of 65.438 billion yuan in late August last year, and plans to repay the remaining principal of "65.438+06 Yangcheng 02" of 65.438+28.9 billion yuan, accounting for about 77.58%; In July this year, the newly issued bonds/kloc-0.5 billion yuan were mainly used to repay and sell back the principal of "16Yangcheng 0 1" and "19Yangcheng 02" * * * 2.06 billion yuan, accounting for 72.82%.
Through the "15% discount" rule, the stock debt of housing enterprises has steadily declined. At the same time, the executives of the housing enterprises interviewed also stressed that there is no new quota for housing enterprises at this stage, including corporate bonds and medium-term notes.
"Now the exchange and interbank financing are not treated differently according to the' three red lines', and even the' green file' has not increased the quota." People working in "green file" state-owned enterprises said that even they now feel the pressure of tightening financing.
According to the statement mentioned by the outside world, the "three red lines" are divided into four grades: red, orange, yellow and green according to three indicators, and the corresponding annual growth rate of interest-bearing liabilities does not exceed 0, 5%, 10% and 15%.
The above-mentioned senior executives of real estate enterprises confirmed to the new media of Viewpoint Real Estate that the real estate financing environment has indeed not been relaxed. When the regulatory authorities approve the issuance of bonds, the important link of strict examination is "fundraising purposes". The source explained that this is mainly because the regulatory authorities are worried about the solvency of housing enterprises.
According to the data disclosed by Shanghai Stock Exchange in June, in 2020, the average income of corporate bond issuers increased by 2.5%, and the average income of real estate issuers increased by 1 1.95%. The issuer's net cash outflow from fund-raising activities increased by 65,438+03.35% year-on-year, while the cash flow from fund-raising activities decreased by 94.43% compared with the previous year due to the influence of industry policies such as "three red lines".
At that time, when Shanghai Stock Exchange responded to the supervision of corporate bond annual report, it emphasized the importance of risk orientation and the disclosure of major issues of bond repayment. Among them, the Exchange made a detailed analysis of enterprises with high risk exposure in the early stage and seriously affected by the epidemic, as well as issuers with heavy debt repayment pressure and major negative changes in financial indicators such as operating conditions or solvency this year.
In a recent report, Standard & Poor's Credit Review also pointed out that with the gradual increase of supply-side regulation, aggressive land acquisition and scale expansion in the past will lead to more challenges for highly leveraged housing enterprises. This is mainly because in the current tight financing environment, it is difficult for highly leveraged housing enterprises to continue to use refinancing to maintain the rolling of funds, which may catalyze the fermentation of credit risk events.
Viewpoint Real Estate New Media has learned that a considerable number of housing enterprises will set special terms when financing, including but not limited to cross-protection, financial indicator commitment, control right change, rating commitment and so on. And single debt is easy to trigger the butterfly effect. Zeng Baobao, the founder of Fantasia, mentioned earlier that at the end of September, Standard & Poor's suddenly downgraded the company's rating, which led to serious restrictions on cross-financing at home and abroad and tight liquidity in stages.
Another real estate company, Blu-ray Development, which has defaulted on its debts, issued corporate bonds of155 million yuan in March and July last year, accounting for only 53% of the 2.9 billion yuan issued in 20091October 20165438+1October. Since then, few new corporate bonds have been issued. According to the regulations, this bond is valid until June this year 165438+ 10.
Between cracks
In addition to the exchange market, medium-term notes, short-term financing bills, ultra-short-term financing bills and other tools commonly used in the interbank market have not continued to become a "paradise" for housing enterprises. Although the CSRC cancelled the mandatory rating of corporate bonds in February this year and the Dealers Association cancelled the mandatory rating of short-term financing bonds in March, the medium-term notes of housing enterprises basically have additional approval requirements such as "15% discount".
According to the incomplete statistics of Viewpoint Real Estate New Media, as of 10/0/20, the total number of medium-term bill registration applications accepted by mainstream real estate enterprises in the year disclosed by Dealers Association was about 93.55438+03 billion yuan.
Among them, similar to the distribution of corporate bond applications, most of the medium-term notes were registered in the first half of the year, about 76.2 billion yuan, involving Vanke, Sunshine City, Dalian Wanda Commercial Management, China Resources Land, Poly, Jinmao and Joy City. The third quarter was mainly registered in September, involving only Tianheng Real Estate and Shoukai Shares.
The executives of the housing enterprises interviewed said that the industry basically borrows the new and returns the old, and the registration of bills only means that the corresponding enterprises have surviving debts due during this period. "It doesn't mean much."
According to Wind's statistics, the "three red lines", that is, since August 2020, the real estate enterprises that have raised more money through corporate bonds, medium-term notes, ultra-short-term financing bonds, ABS and other tools are China Merchants Shekou, of which ultra-short-term financing bonds 10, corporate bonds 50, medium-term notes 30, and the total financing is 24.5 billion yuan; Followed by Fahua shares 16, the first shares 14, Poly Development 13.
If we only observe one corporate bond (excluding private debt), the housing enterprises that issued the most corporate bonds during this period were Poly Development 10, Vanke, China Shipping, Longhu and Financial Street 7. Housing enterprises have great resistance in the process of issuing bonds, but successful financing from the open market will still bring them great benefits.
From the direct impact, Vanke, Poly, Sunshine City and other companies that issued corporate bonds this year have basically not increased their asset-liability ratio in the consolidated financial statements after implementing the established financing plan, but the coverage of current assets to current liabilities has improved, and their short-term solvency has increased.
Under normal circumstances, the debt repayment funds required by housing enterprises to issue bonds mainly come from their daily operating income, which requires enterprises to maintain good operating conditions, financial conditions and asset quality. However, due to the increase in the proportion of land price to house price in the past few years, the overall profitability of housing enterprises has declined compared with the past level.
Secondly, it provides liquidity support through existing bank credit lines and sales receipts. For example, as of the first half of this year, COSCO claimed that it had an unused credit line of 59.6 billion yuan and enjoyed the credit line of its parent company, which was 242.4 billion yuan. During the year, most housing enterprises tried to increase the speed of sales repayment and introduced marketing measures including price reduction promotion.
However, under the restriction of "two concentrations" of bank loans, the credit financing conditions of commercial banks for real estate enterprises have increased, and the mortgage amount of commercial housing loans is running low.
Haitong Securities once counted that among the 39 listed banks, the number of banks whose personal housing loans exceeded the warning line was still 1 1, but the rate of passing the line generally declined, and the number of banks whose real estate loans exceeded the warning line dropped from 10 to 9.
It is worth mentioning that for housing enterprises, part of the funds can still be publicly obtained through "special corporate bonds for housing leasing". According to the rules of the exchange, at least 70% of the raised funds of this financing product must be used for rental housing projects, covering renovation and leasing projects such as residential land, collective land construction, commercial office buildings and industrial plants, and are not subject to the "15% discount" restriction.
Including Vanke, Poly, Jindi, Binjiang, China Resources Land, Dahua Group, Fahua Co., Ltd., Sunshine City and other housing enterprises, they have all been approved or are applying for special corporate bonds for housing leasing in the past year. From the practical point of view, Vanke, Poly and other enterprises that have completed the issuance of this variety will use not less than 70% of the funds for the construction of leasing projects, and the rest will be used for "supplementing liquidity".
However, the liquidity obtained through the above channels is still difficult to quench thirst. Most practitioners did not expect that since the "three red lines", the impact of real estate supervision has been so far-reaching. If we continue or further strengthen the restrictive financing policy for housing enterprises, this group will face extremely difficult financing plans and financing costs.
Faced with such a situation, housing enterprises have high expectations for marginal easing of financing, and the attitude of the regulatory authorities always affects their nerves.
At the end of September, the central bank and the China Banking Regulatory Commission announced that they would guide major banks to accurately grasp and implement the prudent management system of real estate finance, maintain the smooth and orderly delivery of real estate credit, and maintain the stable and healthy development of the real estate market.
10 In mid-June, Zou Lan, director of the Financial Markets Department of the Central Bank, explained that some financial institutions also had some misunderstandings about the "three-line and four-file" financing management rules of 30 pilot real estate enterprises, and demanded that the balance of interest-bearing liabilities of "red-file" enterprises should not be increased. People misunderstand that banks are not allowed to issue new development loans. After the enterprise repays the loan with the sales income, the newly started projects that should have been reasonably supported can't get the loan, which also causes the capital chain of some enterprises to be tense to some extent.
1October 20th 10 Commissioner the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and Liu He, Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China also said that the reasonable capital demand of real estate is being met. On the same day, Pan, deputy governor of the central bank and director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, pointed out that under the expected guidance of financial management departments, the excessive contraction of risk appetite of financial institutions and financial markets has been gradually corrected, and financing behavior and financial market prices are gradually returning to normal.