Country Garden warns on deliveries

Agencies and staff reporter

Country Garden's (2007) chairwoman Yang Huiyan yesterday said that the developer faces an uphill battle with deliveries and it needs to properly handle relations with its creditors to ensure steady operations.

Faced with limited resources, Country Garden will also need support from the local government, Yang, who is also the majority shareholder, said.

Meanwhile, the embattled developer said in a filing yesterday that the Hong Kong High Court had further adjourned a hearing for a petition seeking liquidation to July 29.

The hearing was originally adjourned to June 11 from May as Country Garden had requested more time to prepare evidence.

Country Garden's contracted sales for May plunged 76 percent to 4.3 billion yuan (HK$4.64 billion) from a year earlier, following an 83 percent slide in April, which may exacerbate the cash crunch.

Developer China Overseas Land & Investment (0688) also said its May contracted property sales fell 33 percent to 19.7 billion yuan over the previous year.

In other news, China's property stocks are on track to enter a technical bear market. A Bloomberg Intelligence gauge of Chinese developer shares fell 3.3 percent yesterday, extending losses from a mid-May high to almost 21 percent. Sunac China (1918) was the biggest laggard with a slump of 12 percent, while CIFI (0884) sank 8.4 percent.