HONG KONG—China Evergrande Group on Tuesday missed its third round of bond payments in three weeks, intensifying market fears over contagion involving other property developers as a wall of debt payment obligations come due in the near-term.
Some bondholders said they did not receive coupon payments totalling $148 million on Evergrande’s April 2022, April 2023, and April 2024 notes due by 0400 GMT on Tuesday, following two other payments it missed in September.
That puts investors at risk of large losses at the end of 30-day grace periods as the developer wrestles with more than $300 billion in liabilities.
Evergrande did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A total of $92.3 billion bonds issued by Chinese developers will be due in the next year, Refinitiv data show.
“We see more defaults ahead if the liquidity problem does not improve markedly,” said brokerage CGS-CIMB in a note, adding developers with weaker credit rating are having difficulty in refinancing at the moment.
Shanghai Stock Exchange data showed the top five losers among exchange-traded bonds in morning deals were all issued by property firms.
Small developers Modern Land and Sinic Holdings were the latest scrambling to delay deadlines, after Evergrande and Fantasia missed their payments since September.
Modern Land’s dollar bond due 2023 plunged 25 percent to 32.250 cents on the dollar, while Sinic’s bond due 2022 rose 12 percent to 19.35 cents, yielding over 1380 percent.
Modern Land, whose shares dropped over 3 percent to new low on Tuesday, had requested bondholders on Monday to delay a repayment due later this month for three months, while Sinic said it would likely default next week.
Aoyuan’s bond due 2025 declined 3.5 percent while Sunac’s bond due 2024 lost 2.6 percent.
On Monday, Fantasia Holdings’ unit limited trading in its Shanghai bonds, which is often done ahead of defaults.
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