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China Evergrande Group, the world’s most-indebted property developer, reported a narrower net loss for the first half of the year, thanks to a rise in revenue.
Evergrande said its January-June loss was 33 billion yuan ($4.53 billion) versus a 66.4 billion yuan loss in the same period a year earlier.
The developer is at the centre of a crisis in China’s property sector that since late 2021 has seen a string of debt defaults, unfinished homes and unpaid suppliers, shattering consumer confidence in the world’s second-largest economy.
Evergrande said first-half revenue rose 44% from a year earlier to 128.2 billion yuan, as it “actively planned for the resumption of sales and successfully seized the short boom of the property market that emerged at the beginning of the year”. Cash fell by 6.3% to 13.4 billion yuan.
Liabilities slightly dropped to 2.39 trillion yuan from 2.44 trillion yuan at the end of 2022, while total assets also shrank to 1.74 trillion yuan from 1.84 trillion yuan.
The developer posted a combined net loss of $81 billion for 2021 and 2022 in a long-overdue earnings report last month, versus an 8.1 billion yuan profit in 2020.
China Evergrande will resume stock trading in Hong Kong on Aug. 28 after being suspended on March 21 last year after it failed to get back on its feet amid the debt crisis.
The company’s external auditor, Prism Hong Kong and Shanghai Ltd, reviewed the independent investigation report and concluded that there are no significant off-balance sheet transactions, assets and liabilities, or pledged deposits other than those disclosed by the company, Evergrande said in a stock exchange filing.