中国大型房地产开发公司负债严重

When Li Keqiang, China’s premier, told the National People’s Congress this month that the government was worried about “high leverage in non-financial Chinese firms”, finance directors of the country’s property developers must have winced.

本月，当中国国务院总理李克强在全国人大会议上表示政府担心“非金融企业杠杆率较高”时，中国房地产开发商的财务总监们肯定哆嗦了一下。

Balanced between their reliance on ballooning debt markets, which Beijing wants to bring under control, and a housing boom that authorities want to cool, developers have defied predictions of collapse for years.

多年来，房地产开发商一直在依赖(政府希望收紧控制的)日益扩大的债券市场和(政府希望降温的)房地产热潮之间保持着平衡，从而避免了市场如人们预测的那样崩盘。

Even now, few analysts are predicting disaster but they say high leverage is a rising risk as margins come under pressure.

即便是现在也几乎没有分析师预测房地产市场会爆发灾难，但他们表示，随着利润率面临压力，高杠杆的风险日益上升。

“China’s more heavily indebted developers are living on a knife’s edge,” says Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research, an investment research group in Hong Kong.

香港投资研究集团Orient Capital Research董事总经理安德鲁•科利尔(Andrew Collier)表示：“中国负债较为严重的开发商正处在刀锋边缘。”

Real estate developers are facing a funding squeeze just as they are entering their first downturn in three years. House prices rose 40 per cent in big cities last year but have stalled in 2017. Single-digit price declines are expected this year and sales revenues for the bigger developers could fall by as much as 10 per cent, according to S&P Global Ratings, as transaction volumes decline. Last year, revenues rose 20 per cent.

房地产开发商正面临资金紧张，它们正进入3年来首次低迷。去年，中国大城市房价上涨40%，但2017年陷入停滞。根据标普全球评级(S&P Global Ratings)的数据，随着交易量下滑，预计今年房价将出现一位数下跌，规模较大开发商的销售额可能会下降最多10%。去年，房地产开发商销售收入增长20%。

“China’s big developers stand out compared to their peers worldwide for being highly leveraged, thanks to their access to local banks and capital markets,” says Wang Xinling, lead analyst at China Policy, a think-tank in Beijing.

北京智库中国政策评论(China Policy)的首席分析师王欣玲表示：“与全球同行相比，中国大型开发商高度负债的情况非常明显，这种状况是因为它们可以利用地方银行和资本市场。”

On top of a slowing market, many funding sources favoured by property companies are coming under threat. Beijing began restricting funding last October, ordering regulators to limit equity and bond sales by developers as part of efforts to rein in the property market.

除了市场放缓，开发商青睐的很多融资来源正面临威胁。去年10月，中国开始限制融资、命令监管机构限制开发商的股票和债券发行，这是控制房地产市场举措的一部分。

Authorities have also clamped down on the inclusion of property loans in wealth management products, which had in effect allowed banks to keep a portion of their lending off the books. The ability to tap WMPs had become a key source of capital for developers, according to several analysts. 中国当局还一直打击将房地产贷款纳入理财产品的行为，这些理财产品实际上允许银行将部分贷款转移到资产负

债表以外。据一些分析师称，能够利用理财产品成为了开发商的一个重要资金来源。

“We believe the funding restriction will weaken Chinese property developers’ access to alternative financing and increase their cash flow burden,” says Cindy Huang, credit analyst at S&P Global Ratings.

标普全球评级的信贷分析师黄馨慧(Cindy Huang)表示：“我们认为，融资限制将削弱中国房地产开发商利用其它融资来源的能力并加大他们的现金流负担。”

Evergrande, China’s second-biggest property group by sales, is the most leveraged among mainland and Hong Kong-listed developers, according to data from Wind Information. Its net debt was 605 per cent of its equity as of June 2016, versus the sector average of 90.

根据万得资讯(Wind Information)的数据，在中国内地和香港上市的房地产公司中，恒大(Evergrande)负债率最高。截至2016年6月，该公司的净负债权益比为605%，行业平均水平为90%。以2016年销售额计，恒大是中国最大的房地产公司。

“Evergrande is the poster child for the wackiness of the Chinese property market, where property is an asset to be held rather than something to live in,” says Anne Stevenson-Yang, director of research at J Capital Research.

美奇金(J Capital Research)研究主管杨思安(Anne Stevenson-Yang)表示：“恒大是中国房地产市场反常之处的典型代表，在中国，房地产被当做资产持有，而不是用来居住。”

The developer’s borrowings increased almost 50 per cent in the second half of last year to Rmb565bn ($82bn), according to a company filing last month.

根据上个月恒大披露的文件，去年下半年，恒大借款增长近一半，至5650亿元人民币(合820亿美元)。

Yet the company has repeatedly refinanced debt in previous years from banks and bond investors emboldened, say JPMorgan analysts, by a perception that Evergrande is too big to fail.

然而，摩根大通(JPMorgan)分析师表示，前几年，恒大多次从银行和债券投资者那里对债务进行了再融资，认为恒大“太大而不能倒”的观点给了银行和债券投资者胆量。

Greenland Holdings, number four last year in terms of property sales, has similarly heavy debts. Its net debt to equity ratio was almost 300 per cent at the end of September, according to estimates by Huachuang Securities, an investment group. As of the end of June, it held net debt of Rmb185bn.

中国第四大房地产公司(以去年房地产销售额计)绿地集团(Greenland Holdings)也背负着沉重的债务。根据投资集团华创证券(Huachuang Securities)的估算，到去年9月底，绿地集团的净负债权益比接近于300%。到去年6月底，该公司净负债为1850亿元人民币。

State-owned status is an added benefit that has given Greenland privileged access to loans in return for partnering with the government for infrastructure projects.

国有企业的身份是一项额外优势，绿地可以通过与政府合作开发基础设施项目优先获得贷款。

“The property sector is the foundation for China’s economy,” says Jonas Short, head of NSBO China, a policy research group in Beijing.

北京政策研究机构蓝橡资本(NSBO)中国公司负责人乔纳斯•肖特(Jonas Short)表示：“房地产行业是中国经济的基础。”

Close links between corporate and state interests have tempted investors to consider big property groups as sure-fire investments, no matter the scale of their debt or asset quality.

企业和政府利益的密切联系促使投资者把大型房地产公司视为稳赚不赔的投资，而不管它们的债务规模或资产质量如何。

“Foreign investors look at these companies and think — their bond yields are relatively high, and they must be backed by the government, so why not buy?” says J Capital’s Ms Stevenson-Yang.

美奇金的杨思安表示：“外国投资者看到这些公司，然后会认为，这些公司的债券收益率相对较高，并且它们肯定得到了政府的支持，那么为什么不买呢?”

Developers are also adept at avoiding writedowns on assets, often halting sales when prices begin to slip to preserve their valuations, adds Ms Stevenson-Yang.

杨思安补充说，房地产开发商还善于避免资产减记，通常会在价格开始下跌时暂停销售，以保护它们的估值。

Another tactic is to classify empty buildings as investment properties rather than inventory, which is marked at market prices. GMT Research, an accounting research group, said it visited 40 Evergrande developments and found that much of the company’s “investment properties” were empty hotels and shop fronts or abandoned parking lots.

另一个手段是将空置楼盘列为投资物业(而不是库存)，这些资产以市场价格计值。会计研究机构GMT Research表示，该公司在探访恒大40个开发项目后发现，该公司的很多“投资物业”都是空置的酒店和底商或者废弃的停车场。

“In China it’s not unusual for large development sites to take five to 10 years to be fully sold,” says Su Aik Lim, senior director at Fitch Ratings. “The question is whether they will be fully sold.”

“在中国，大型开发项目要花5到10年的时间才能全部卖掉，这是常有的事，”惠誉评级(Fitch Ratings)的高级总监林树毅(Su Aik Lim)表示，“问题是他们是否会全部卖掉。”

Yet so far there are few signs of acute financing strain among the biggest developers. Even as local bond markets closed, many property groups have this year tapped international markets, where appetite for their high-yielding paper remains robust.

然而，目前几乎没有迹象表明，大型开发商面临严峻的融资压力。随着地方债券市场的关闭，很多开发商集团今年转向国际市场，在这个市场，投资者对于中国房地产开发商的高收益债券仍兴趣高涨。

Last week Evergrande attracted bids worth $5.4bn for the sale of $1.5bn in bonds.

上周，恒大发行了15亿美元债券，吸引了54亿美元的超额认购。

“A lot of people have made money from buying these bonds at the bottom and there are real assets behind them, too,” says one China debt banker. “People feel like they’ve seen the worst and these guys are the survivors.”

“很多人因为抄底购买这些债券赚了钱，这些债券背后还有实物资产的支撑，”一位从事债券业务的中国银行业人士表示，“人们觉得他们看到过最糟糕的情况，这些公司是幸存者。”