Adani Group refutes The Ken report on its debt repayment

29 Mar 2023 , 11:14 AM

The Adani Group has refuted The Ken’s news report, describing it as ‘baseless and intentionally mischievous,’ which alleged that the Group has not finished repaying $2.15 billion in share-backed debt. The business provided the clarification late on Tuesday.

‘Digital magazine The Ken asserts falsely and intentionally prankishly that the Group has not finished repaying $2.15 billion in share-backed debt. In accordance with our media release from March 12, 2023, Adani has fully prepaid all margin-linked share-backed financing totaling $2.15 billion, and all corresponding shares pledged for those facilities have been released ‘a statement from the firm.

The company disclosed the number of shares pledged as of 31 December 2022 and the amount pledged as of 27 March 2023. (factoring in current stock prices).

The justification for the residual share promise stance is also discussed in the release.

All of the promoters’ share-backed borrowings have been repaid.

Following such repayment, ListCo’s pledge positions for Adani Green, Adani Ports, Adani Transmission, and Adani Enterprises were significantly reduced, with the sole remaining pledges for shares matching to Operational Company (OpCo) facilities.

After the short-seller report, respective OpCo has only used the OpCo facilities that are already available to them as part of their existing debt structures.

According to the Adani Group announcement, all the pledged shares were released after prepayments totaling billion were made.

According to the current regulations, no additional filing is necessary because every share pledge or release is automatically disclosed by the depository participant’s system-driven disclosure (SDD) mechanism. The NSE website has already been modified to reflect the same. The BSE website, however, has not been changed to reflect the same, according to the announcement.

The group asserted that Adani Transmission and Adani Green Energy are not subject to the disclosure requirements set forth by Sebi, which in this case only apply to Adani Ports and are not applicable to pledges or releases of 5% or more of the company’s shares.

As a result, only Adani Ports’ disclosure has been submitted in accordance with Sebi SAST guidelines. It should be noted that according to the media release from February 6, 2023, 1.4% of Adani Transmission shares, 3% of Adani Green Energy shares, and 12% of Adani Ports shares were all issued. SAST disclosure therefore only applied to Adani Ports.

According to the news release from March 12, 2023, ‘there has been incremental prepayment of $134 million completed following the press releases of March 6, 2023 ($1,114 million), and March 7, 2023 ($902 million), resulting in the updated debt total of $2.15 billion.’

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