$1.9 billion Adani Group dollar bonds to mature in 2024 

Adani Group dollar-denominated bonds worth $1.9 billion are scheduled to mature in 2024. This comes amidst reports that the group is engaging with lenders to prepay some of its commitments to revive investor confidence. 

The bonds include two issuances worth $1.25 billion by Adani Green and $650 million worth of bonds by Adani Port. During 2023, the conglomerate is scheduled to pay $289 million towards interest.   

Meanwhile, the slide in Adani group market capitalisation continued on Friday as companies lost ₹33,928 crore in valuation. On Thursday, the National Stock Exchange(NSE) put three group companies, namely Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports and Ambuja Cement into the ASM category. All 3 ended in green at the close of Friday's trade.   

Interestingly, since the inception of ASM in 2018, this was the first time Nifty 50 stocks were put under ASM. Before ASM, Indian exchanges ran the Badla system. In the past, Nifty 50 companies like Reliance Power, JP Power, and Suzlon lost their Nifty 50 positions and were settled through the Badla mechanism. In Friday’s trade, Reliance Power, JP Power, and Suzlon ended at ₹11.75, ₹6.8, and ₹9.05, respectively.

On Thursday morning, Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani tried to soothe the nerves of jittery investors--mainly institutional investors--through a video message. Institutional investors like mutual funds and insurance companies play a critical role in stabilising stock prices as most of these are long-term investors. As on Friday, the total exposure of Foreign Institutional Investors in the Adani Group of companies stood at ₹1,48,505 crore or $18.56 billion. Similarly, domestic mutual funds have a cumulative exposure of ₹16,264 crore ($ 2.03 billion).

Investors' scrutiny has intensified about the Adani Group since the release of the Hindenburg Report. As per Bloomberg, in the next two months, Adani Group will face an interest payment of $90.75 million. By March 2023, Adani Port faces an interest payment of $40.45 million, while Adani Transmission, Adani Electricity Mumbai, Adani Green and Adani International Container will need to pay $10 million, $19.7 million, $16.4 million and $4.2 million, respectively.  

In Friday's trade, five group stocks closed in the lower circuit: These stocks are Adani Power (closing price- ₹192.05), Adani Wilmar (₹400.40), Adani Total Gas (₹1,626), Adani Transmission (₹1,402) and Adani Green (₹ 934). Flagship Company Adani Enterprises was up 1.25% and closed at ₹1,584 while Adani Ports, ACC and Ambuja Cements were up by 7.98% (closing price- ₹499), 4.39% (₹1,926) and 6.03% (₹374), respectively.

Stocks that are not part of ASM faced consistent selling since the beginning of trade and the driving force for this selling was a media report which stated that flagship company- Adani Enterprises shares will be removed from Dow Jones Sustainability Indices. The news dragged the group companies' shares into the red but eventually, four group companies ended on a positive note.  

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Citigroup Wealth unit has halted margin loans on Adani Securities. This caused a fall in group company stocks that were faring well before the news surfaced.

A day before yesterday, Swiss finance giant Credit Suisse announced that it has stopped accepting bonds from the Adani Group of companies as collateral for margin loans to its private banking clients. Bloomberg reported the Swiss lender’s private banking arm assigned a zero lending value for notes sold by Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, Adani Green Energy, and Adani Electricity Mumbai. It had previously offered a lending value of about 75% for Adani Ports, as per the report.

Since January 24, the total market cap of Adani Group has fallen from ₹19.21 lakh crore to ₹10.08 lakh crore, down by ₹9.13 lakh crore or 47.54%.

Since January 23, Adani Enterprises has lost ₹2.10 lakh crore, while Adani Power, Adani Wilmar, Adani Port, Adani Total Gas, Adani Transmission, Adani Green, ACC, and Ambuja lost ₹31,318 crore, ₹18,949 crore, ₹58,366 crore, ₹2.49 lakh crore, ₹1.54 lakh crore, ₹1.57 lakh crore, ₹7,440 crore and ₹25,257 crore, respectively. Between 2021 and 2022, Adani Group doubled in market cap from ₹9.62 lakh crore to ₹19.63 lakh crore.