The Adani Group, in response to a media report that questioned the conglomerate’s repayment of its debt totalling $2.15 billion, called the claims “baseless and deliberately mischievous”. It reiterated that the group completed the full prepayment of margin-linked share backed financing aggregating to $2.15 billion.
A news report by digital website The Ken stated that the conglomerate only reduced the loan amount through partial repayment to avoid pledging more shares and further action against it by lenders.
Stock exchanges NSE and BSE sought clarification from Adani Enterprises Ltd over its loan repayment.
All share-backed facilities by the promoters have been paid off, it said.
The pledge positions for the listed companies including Adani Green, Adani Ports, Adani Transmission and Adani Enterprises have reduced substantially and only the residual share pledges corresponding to the operating company are outstanding.
Since the Hindenburg report, no new operating company facilities have been availed. OpCO facilities are availed by the respective OpCo and are part of their existing debt structure.
The Ken reported that while Adani Group claimed to have repaid about $2.15 billion, a large portion of promoters’ shares is yet to be released by the lenders. It also said that neither the company, nor the lenders have made any disclosures regarding the same. In response, the Adani Group said that all pledged shares have been released, quoting a March 12 release. It said that any share pledge or release is reported by a system driven disclosure (SDD) mechanism, and no separate filing is required to be made. The same has been updated on NSE, but is not updated on BSE.
The March 12 release, as mentioned in the response above, stated that Adani Group has completed the “full prepayment of margin linked share backed financing aggregating to $2.15 billion, well before the committed timeline of 31 March 2023”. It also said that the promoters have also prepaid the $500 million facility that was taken for Ambuja acquisition. The entire $2.65 billion prepayment was completed within 6 weeks.
The report had stated that after Adani’s prepayment announcement, only pledged shares of Adani Ports & SEZ have been released and the pledged shares of Adani Green and Adani Transmission have not been released by the banks even after a month after the repayment. It also said that despite the group’s claims of “complete” repayment, none of the promoters’ pledged shares, apart from Adani Ports & SEZ, have been released. In its response, Adani Group said that according to SEBI, disclosure obligations on pledge or release of 5 per cent or higher is not applicable – except for Adani Ports & SEZ.
The Ken had stated that the group declared that it fully prepays share-backed financing on March 12. It said that while the group said that it paid $2.15 billion, only two tranches of loan repayment – $1.1 billion in February and $905 million in March – were announced, which added up to $2 billion. The group responded by saying that there have been incremental payment of $134 million after the February 6 ($1,114 million or $1.11 billion) and March 7 ($902 million) press releases, resulting in the updated figure of $2.15 billion for the press release of March 12.
Also read: Stock exchanges seek clarification from Adani Enterprises over loan repayment