China Evergrande shares tumbled as trading resumed after 17 months

Shares of China Evergrande Group, the world’s most indebted real estate developer, fell as much as 87% at their open on Monday, to trade for the first time since March 21, 2022.

Shares fell to 22 HK cents on Monday, compared to their last close of HK$1.65 per share on March 18, 2022.

The trade resumption comes as the company posted a loss of 39.25 billion yuan ($5.38 billion) for the six months ending in June, smaller than the loss of 86.17 billion yuan in the same period last year.

Revenue was 128.81 billion yuan, up from 89.28 billion yuan in June 2022.

In July, the beleaguered company filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection with a US court, which shields its US assets from creditors while it works on a restructuring deal elsewhere.

in filing it to Hong Kong exchangeEvergrande revealed that its liabilities totaled 2.39 trillion yuan as of June this year, which is slightly lower than the 2.44 trillion yuan in the six months ending June 30, 2022.

As of June, Evergrande’s total assets were 1.74 trillion yuan, including total cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash of 13.4 billion yuan.

Evergrande defaulted in 2021 and filed for bankruptcy External debt restructuring programme in March, after struggling to finish projects and pay suppliers and lenders.

And earlier this year, the company reported a combined loss of $81 billion in its long-awaited earnings report.

The company said net losses for 2021 and 2022 amounted to 476 billion yuan and 105.9 billion yuan, respectively, as a result of write-offs of property values, land returns, losses of financial assets and financing costs.

In 2020, before the company defaulted, Evergrande reported a net profit of 8.1 billion yuan.

— CNBC’s Sumathi Bala and Elliott Smith contributed to this report.