DHFL Repays Rs 276 Crore To Investors And Depositors

Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd. paid investors and depositors part of repayments due after missing the deadline earlier this week. DHFL paid investors around Rs 276.05 crore on its principal and interest obligations towards its non-convertible debentures, according to its exchange filing late on Friday.

• Interest of Rs 962 crore was due on Tuesday June 4, of which Rs 59.74 crore has been paid to 35,595 of the 36,700 retail investors in NCDs.
• Interest of Rs 80 crore and principal of Rs 120 crore was owed to 15 investors in privately placed NCDs. The company arranged for funds and met its obligations on the redemption date of June 4.
• The company met its obligations towards Rs 16.31 crore worth of privately placed NCDs, which were due on June 6.

CARE Ratings downgraded DHFL’s all outstanding borrowings of Rs 1 lakh crore to ‘Default’ after the non-bank lender missed interest payments on debentures earlier this week.

DHFL has Rs 850 crore of outstanding commercial papers, of which Rs 750 crore is due in June 2019, according to rating agencies. Around Rs 100 crore was up for redemption on June 7. But the exchange filing didn’t provide details on whether the company met its commercial paper obligations.

The company has over Rs 7,800 crore worth of principal and interest payments on bonds and NCDs coming up in 2019. Of this, Rs 5,479 crore is in the form of redemptions.

The housing financier faced a stock rout in September last year as well, following the surprise defaults by the Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services group. Allegations of siphoning of funds by promoters in January only added to its troubles.

CARE and Crisil have consistently revised their credit rating on DHFL debt in the past two months, making it even tougher for the firm to raise fresh funds from the debt markets. The company’s called this rating decision “unwarranted” and “speculative”.

Since September last year, the company has repaid close to Rs 40,000 crore of debt. It raised Rs 17,860 crore through retail-asset securitisation in the first nine months of FY19, and mopped up Rs 1,375 crore and Rs 900 crore in two separate develop-loan securitisation transactions in the last six months.

It’s also looking to sell its subsidiaries Aadhaar Housing Finance, Avanse Financial Services Ltd. and its mutual-fund arm DHFL Pramerica Asset Managers.

On Friday, DHFL shares fell 11.08 percent to Rs 83.50 apiece on the BSE while the benchmark Sensex rose 0.22 percent to end the day at 39,615.90 points.