Ahmedabad, March 28 Rubbishing the report by a news portal claiming incomplete repayment of $ 2.15 billion share-backed debt, the Adani Group late on Tuesday issued a statement terming the claims to be “baseless” and “deliberately mischievous”.
“Adani has completed full prepayment of margin-linked share-backed financing aggregating to $2.15 billion and all corresponding shares pledged for those facilities have been released,” it said in a statement.
Clarification sought
The stock exchanges NSE and BSE had on Tuesday sought clarification from the Adani Group on the media report that raised questions about the release of the pledged shares of the group companies.
The news portal had claimed that the banks haven’t released a large portion of the promoter shares, contradictory to the claims made by Adani Group over the past two months of having repaid about $2.15 billion under its margin-linked share-backed debts.
This had sent Adani Group shares tumbling in the range of 3- 7 per cent with five of the 10 Adani portfolio companies hitting lower circuit on Tuesday. The flagship Adani Enterprises had lost over 7 per cent.
In its clarification, Adani Group released the share pledge position as on December 31, 2022 and the current share pledge position as on March 27, 2023 giving a comparison for four Group companies Adani Green Energy from 4.4 per cent pledge in December 31, 2022, that reduced to 3.5 per cent as on Tuesday.
Similarly, for Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd (APSEZ), the share pledge of 17.3 per cent reduced to 4.7 per cent, Adani Transmission it was 6.6 per cent which reduced to 3.8 per cent and for the flagship Adani Enterprises it reduced from 2.7 per cent to 0.6 per cent between December 31, 2022 and March 27, 2023.
Residual share pledge position
In its rationale for the residual share pledge position, Adani stated that only residual share pledge corresponding to Operating Company (OpCo) facilities remained outstanding.
“OpCo facilities are availed by respective OpCo, and are part of their existing debt structure, and no new OpCo facilities have been availed since the short-seller report,” the statement added.
It also clarified that for the residual pledge position of the OpCo facilities, these facilities have secured various facilities based on the security of project assets, project cashflow and other such collaterals. Also, in addition to such security, listed shares have been provided as additional collateral for these OpCo liabilities for additional lender comfort.
“Such facilities do not have covenants like cash margin calls, share price linked put option, etc. which exist in share-backed financing,” it said.