Big news in Country Garden! Sell 3.8 billion assets in large quantities, sell hotels and office buildings first instead of houses! What’s the meaning behind it？
In order to revitalize its assets, Country Garden took the lead in selling commercial assets instead of transferring its residential development projects. In today’s market, high-quality commercial assets are easier to cash out. In the past, commercial assets that were considered to be "difficult to get rid of and heavy on assets" may have better liquidity than residential projects.
With the continuous injection of favorable financial policies for real estate, the news of large-scale commercial assets transactions frequently spread in the domestic real estate M&A market, and selling commercial assets has become an important strategy to revitalize the stock of head housing enterprises. After Vanke set up the business department, will Country Garden take a new step?
Source: New Fortune Magazine (ID: xcf Plus)
Author: Du Dongdong
After Wanda Group’s sale of 10 wanda plaza attracted attention, the news of Country Garden (02007.HK) selling assets was screened.
On the evening of January 22, 2024, Country Garden listed on the Guangzhou Property Rights Exchange and transferred a number of assets, including hotels, office buildings, commercial properties, office buildings, apartment buildings, etc. The total price of assets to be transferred was 3.818 billion yuan.
Since the first debt default in August, 2023, the management of Country Garden has repeatedly stated that it wants to "sell iron" to save itself, from cutting administrative expenses by nearly 60%, shrinking the number of regional companies to 21, selling private jets to Yang Guoqiang, reducing the salary of "working emperor" Mo Bin to 10,000 yuan per month, and even auctioning off the car for senior executives to pay off debts. In order to reverse the predicament, "Cosmic Housing Enterprises" can be described as all kinds of "vicious tricks".
Like most real estate enterprises in danger, Country Garden has inevitably embarked on the road of selling assets to pay off debts, from selling its equity in the Guangzhou Asian Games Town project to transferring the equity of Wanda Commercial Management at a loss, and now it has announced the sale of 3.818 billion yuan of commercial assets in Guangzhou, which is naturally reasonable.
However, as a typical residential real estate developer, Country Garden’s revitalized assets come first with commercial assets, which still surprises many people.
01. First-line commercial assets are put on the "shelf" first.
At the 2024 annual working meeting held on January 15th, Yang Huiyan, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Country Garden Group, once again stressed that "the family must share the fate with the company" and "we are trying our best to revitalize our assets".
The listing and sale of five asset packages in Guangzhou this time shows that Country Garden’s asset revitalization has taken an important step.
According to public information, these five asset packages specifically include: Phoenix Hotel in Zengcheng District, with a price of 1.26 billion yuan, and the highest listing transfer price; Followed by the office building project of Canglongfu in Country Garden, Panyu District, with a price of 1.152 billion yuan; The Grade A office building project of Country Garden Center in Zengcheng District is quoted at 772 million yuan, the Renhe apartment building in Baiyun District is quoted at 384 million yuan, and the AEON commercial property in Country Garden Phoenix City in Zengcheng District is quoted at 250 million yuan.
The highest priced Phoenix Hotel in Zengcheng District is the largest five-star landscape-themed hotel in eastern Guangzhou and one of the few first-tier city hotel projects in Country Garden. It was opened in 2003 and renovated in 2017, with a total of 573 luxury rooms. In addition to the hotel’s assets, Country Garden also sells high-quality office buildings, businesses, apartment buildings and other projects on the counter.
Overall, the quality of Country Garden’s assets on the shelves this time is good. This may be related to its situation.
According to iFind data, by the middle of 2023, Country Garden’s rights and interests attributable to its parent company had further shrunk from a high of 203.623 billion yuan in 2022 to 155.061 billion yuan, and its total liabilities remained at a high level of 1.36 trillion yuan. At the same time, the cash and cash equivalents in Country Garden’s account were 101.115 billion yuan, including 29.454 billion yuan in restricted deposits and cash, and 30.508 billion yuan in accounts receivable and bills in the same period; Short-term loans amounted to 108.703 billion yuan, and accounts payable and notes amounted to 202.237 billion yuan. Money is tight, and selling assets is imminent.
In order to get rid of the predicament, Country Garden has recently made drastic management changes, including merging regional companies, streamlining the structure, and the company’s management taking the initiative to reduce salaries to convey confidence to the market with a positive attitude. In addition to cutting expenses, speeding up the collection of sales payments and receivables, revitalizing large and difficult commercial precipitated assets has become another key measure.
Earlier in September, 2022, Country Garden sold its 26% equity and sales debt of Guangdong Property Rights Exchange Group Investment and Development Co., Ltd. to Jiumaojiu (09922.HK), a Hong Kong-listed catering company.
In August 2023, Country Garden sold 26.67% equity of Guangzhou Asian Games Town Project to China Shipping Real Estate for a total price of about 1.2915 billion yuan. After the acquisition, China Shipping Real Estate became a 100% shareholder of Guangzhou Asian Games Town.
In the same month, Country Garden issued 350 million shares to Jiantao Group (00148.HK), a company listed in Hong Kong stock market, and paid off its debt of HK$ 270 million in the form of "debt-to-equity swap". In the following December, Country Garden sold its stake in Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management at a price of 3.069 billion yuan at a loss of 160 million yuan.
On January 18th, 2024, Country Garden Australia, an Australian subsidiary, sold part of the interest of Wilton Greens to Avantaus, a Chinese private developer, for about A $240 million (about RMB 1.13 billion).
Overall, including this asset sale, Country Garden has not sold many assets so far. As a typical residential real estate developer, Country Garden has invested in more than 3,103 real estate projects in China. Nowadays, in order to revitalize assets, almost all of them are commercial assets, not residential real estate.
According to public information, Country Garden Group’s commercial real estate business is mainly managed by Country Garden Business Travel.
Country Garden Business Travel originated from the business management department established by Country Garden in 2005. It is mainly responsible for undertaking the commercial assets generated in the development of residential business and is positioned to serve residential real estate. In 2018, Country Garden adjusted the commercial sector to the group headquarters, and established Country Garden Business Travel together.
Since 2021, Country Garden Business Travel has gradually focused its operations on shopping centers, and has operated 14 commercial product lines including Bile City, Bile Time, Bijia, Bile Town and Biying International. There are more than 60 group commercial projects under unified management and operation, covering four sectors of commerce, long-term rental, cultural travel and office buildings, and several commercial complexes have been built in cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
According to the data, in 2022, the total construction area of Country Garden Business Travel Project reached 1.13 million square meters, and it landed in 24 cities in 14 provinces across the country. According to the 2023 interim report, the operating income of Country Garden’s property investment and hotel management sector was 2.234 billion yuan, accounting for 0.98% of the total operating income of 226.309 billion yuan, and the asset scale of this sector was not disclosed.
In this asset sale, Country Garden’s "business first" strategy is not uncommon among housing enterprises.
02. Commercial assets are now easier to cash out.
Recently, the enthusiasm of domestic housing enterprises to revitalize their assets is getting higher and higher, and the intention of bringing their projects to the market and revitalizing existing assets to solve the difficulties is getting stronger and stronger. In the real estate M&A market, news of transactions of bulk commercial assets frequently came out, and more and more housing enterprises successfully cashed out.
Looking around the real estate industry, not only Country Garden, but also commercial assets are generally chosen to revitalize the assets of residential housing enterprises.
According to incomplete statistics, in the last three years, the real estate enterprises that sold assets, including at least 15 head real estate enterprises such as Shimao Group (00813.HK), Joy City (000031), OCT (Asia, 03366.HK) and Greenland Holdings (600606), sold projects with a scale of over 100 million yuan, all of which were commercial assets (Table 1).
In contrast, in the residential asset transfer market, except for ST Taihe (000732) and Jinke (000656), the remaining 26 residential developers have only changed hands sporadically.
Wind data shows that from 2021 to 2023, 112 residential related assets were sold by head housing enterprises, with a total transaction scale exceeding 130 billion yuan. In the same period, the transaction scale of commercial real estate projects with a scale of over 100 million yuan nationwide was 102.436 billion yuan, which was similar.
As we all know, the scale of domestic commercial real estate projects is much lower than that of residential real estate assets. In 2023, the national commercial housing sales reached 11.66 trillion yuan. In the same period, the national investment in commercial housing development exceeded 118 million yuan.
The comparison of the two data may reveal a reality-commercial assets that used to be considered as "difficult to get rid of and heavy on assets" are far easier to cash out now than residential development project assets. In other words, the liquidity of residential assets is much lower than that of commercial assets.
Theoretically speaking, superior and high-quality properties in first-and second-tier cities are often easy to directly face C-end sales and withdraw funds without being pushed to the bulk M&A market; Instead of first-and second-tier residential real estate projects, under the background of weak market demand and generally sluggish sales, it is also difficult to transfer equity to B-end financial investment institutions and get cash.
By the first half of 2023, Country Garden’s contracted sales in third-and fourth-tier cities still accounted for 65%. From this point of view, the assets of Country Garden’s residential projects rarely move, but there are difficulties behind putting commercial assets projects on the "counter" first.
Judging from the market transaction cases, domestic commercial offices, industrial logistics, industrial parks, rental housing and consumer infrastructure and other investment real estate have obtained capital bargain-hunting. These commercial projects located in prime locations of first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai are actually assets under pressure and have strong appreciation space. Choosing to start when the market sentiment is depressed and the real estate price is down has a high risk-return ratio for investors.
Therefore, Country Garden takes the lead in selling high-quality office buildings, businesses, apartment buildings and other projects in Guangzhou, and it is relatively easier to get the attention of bargain-hunting capital.
03, the breakthrough of housing enterprises to revitalize assets
The warming of commercial assets transactions may be related to the rapid promotion of real estate financial policies in recent years.
Since 2023, the national ministries and commissions have successively issued the Notice on Standardizing and Recommending Real Estate Investment Trust Funds (REITs) Projects in Infrastructure, and the Notice on Further Promoting the Normalized Issuance of REITs in Infrastructure, among which it is clearly stated that priority should be given to supporting urban and rural commercial network projects such as department stores, shopping centers and farmers’ markets, so as to guarantee the basic livelihood of community commercial projects to issue infrastructure REITs.
On October 20th, 2023, China Securities Regulatory Commission issued the Decision on Amending Article 50 of the Guidelines for Public Offering of Infrastructure Securities Investment Funds (Trial), which expanded the types of pilot assets of publicly offered REITs to consumer infrastructure. At the end of the month, the first batch of four consumer infrastructure REITs were approved.
The gradual expansion of the pilot scope of public offering REITs and the launch of real estate private equity investment funds not only mean that the closed loop of real estate finance in China is gradually taking shape, but also inject a great benefit into activating domestic stock assets.
Public offering of REITs is the most critical part of the commercial real estate cycle. Investors have a higher chance to realize the profit exit of the project through REITs or asset securitization, which is the logic of the bargain-hunting capital giving priority to investing in high-quality commercial real estate projects.
Standing in the current deeply adjusted real estate environment, housing enterprises are generally eager to cash out funds to tide over difficulties, and the revitalization of existing commercial assets has become one of the important strategies to promote housing enterprises to get rid of difficulties. Furthermore, the scale and proportion of commercial assets owned by real estate enterprises may affect the speed of revitalizing their existing assets.
After testing the consumption of REITs, on January 14th, 2024, Vanke released the organizational adjustment and personnel arrangement, set up a business division, and unified the commercial business of seven regions and Yinli Group into it, thus raising the development of its commercial real estate to a new height.
After the sale of Guangzhou commercial assets package, Country Garden still has many commercial projects in hand. Will it take a new step to revitalize related assets? We will wait and see.
Any information and information mentioned in this article is only the expression of the author’s personal views or the statement of specific events, and does not constitute recommendation and investment advice, and does not represent the position of the society. Investors should bear the risks and consequences of investing accordingly.