China Evergrande Group EGRNF -3.97% said it has come up with a new repayment plan for disgruntled individual investors who purchased its wealth-management products, as the beleaguered property giant takes further steps to work through a mountain of financial liabilities and overdue payments.
The conglomerate, which earlier this month sought government help to manage its debt crisis, on Friday said one of its units has proposed to pay almost all holders of its wealth-management products 8,000 yuan—equivalent to $1,255—a month from December to February. The unit, which is known as Evergrande Wealth, said it would come up with another payment plan in March.
Evergrande, one of China’s largest developers, previously sold high-yielding investment products to its employees and other individuals—typically buyers of its properties—as part of a strategy to support its highly leveraged business model.
The company expanded aggressively for years by borrowing heavily from banks, domestic and international bond investors, suppliers and individual investors, and used much of the money to acquire land and assets in areas far beyond residential real estate. It expected booming property sales to generate cash to repay its debts, but ran into trouble after Chinese authorities placed curbs on developers’ borrowing and Evergrande’s apartment sales plunged.
Since the summer, Evergrande has struggled to repay many of its debts after amassing the equivalent of roughly $300 billion in liabilities as of June 30. The developer has also missed multiple interest payments on its outstanding U.S. dollar bonds, including some that were due in December. The world’s three largest credit raters have downgraded their ratings on Evergrande to their lowest levels, declaring it in default.
Evergrande hasn’t disclosed the total amount it owes in wealth-management products that it issued or guaranteed. In mid-September, it said two subsidiaries had failed to honor their obligations as guarantor for the equivalent of around $147 million of wealth-management products issued by third parties. Around that time, individual investors protested outside the developer’s headquarters in Shenzhen, demanding payments. At the end of September, Evergrande said that it had paid the first 10% installment of those products that were due in September.
As Evergrande’s debt problems mounted in recent months, Chinese authorities made clear that a priority was maintaining social stability and containing the fallout of the conglomerate’s troubles on the broader economy and property sector.
In early December, Evergrande turned to the government of its home province of Guangdong for help. Authorities agreed to step in and help the developer manage its debt crisis, and financial regulators said they would help ensure the stability of the broader real-estate market. Evergrande has formed a risk-management committee whose members include representatives from multiple state-owned institutions.
Over the weekend, Evergrande said construction has resumed at most projects where work had previously stalled, and that it was trying to deliver 39,000 finished apartments this month—a fraction of the more than one million units it has presold.
On Friday, Evergrande Wealth said an earlier plan to repay holders of its wealth-management products had been criticized by investors as unfair. That plan had promised investors a combination of cash, highly discounted new properties and reductions in the money they owe for property they have already purchased. But it only offered to repay those with wealth-management products that had already matured.
Further, the unit said the initial plan was no longer practical because the property projects it funded didn’t generate enough cash. Evergrande Wealth “will speed up asset sales…and all proceeds will be used to repay wealth management products,” it added.
The new repayment solution will apply to all wealth-management products—matured or outstanding ones. The plan excludes certain executives of Evergrande, Evergrande Wealth and their family members.
Write to Rebecca Feng at rebecca.feng@wsj.com
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