(Yicai) Dec. 21 -- Chinese real estate developer Longfor Group Holding has completed the issuance of its fourth batch of medium-term notes since August last year.

The notes, worth a total of CNY1.2 billion (USD168.1 million), have a term of three years and a coupon rate of 3.66 percent, the Beijing-based company recently announced.

Since August last year, Longfor has issued four batches of medium-term notes for a total raised amount of CNY5.8 billion (USD812.4 million).

Half of the proceeds from the latest batch of medium-term notes will be used to supplement Longfor’s capital, while the remaining half will be used for project construction and debt repayment, the firm noted.

Longfor’s latest financing has won the full and unconditional irrevocable guarantee from China Bond Insurance, making Longfor the private real estate developer with the most earned credit enhancement-related support from the state-backed financial guarantee service provider and the one with the largest amount of issued notes.

Longfor received credit enhancement support from China Bond Insurance because the company boasts property sales and financial data outpacing the industry’s averages. In the first 11 months of the year, Longfor’s sales fell 11.2 percent from a year earlier, versus an average decline of 14.7 percent among China’s top 100 developers. As of June 30, its net debt ratio was just over 57 percent.

According to media reports yesterday, Longfor completed the early repayment of syndicated loans worth a total of HKD15.3 billion (USD2 billion) due in January, after paying off the last portion of HKD2 billion (USD256.2 million) yesterday.

State-backed bond financing vehicles cumulatively reinforced the issuance by 18 private firms of debt financing instruments worth a total of CNY37.3 billion (USD5.2 billion) since November last year, playing a positive role in easing their credit contraction and repairing their bond financing channels, Yicai learned.

But the proportions of private and mixed-ownership developers’ issuance of credit bonds accounted for merely 6.4 percent and 4.6 percent of the total in the first 11 months of the year, down 0.1 percentage point and 4.7 percentage points, respectively, from a year earlier, according to data from the China Index Academy.

A total of 15 private and mixed-ownership real estate companies completed the issuance of bonds in the 11 months ended Nov. 30, up from 13 in the same period last year, data from the CIA also showed.

The number of private developers issuing bonds has increased this year, but most of them are large companies with basically no risks, said Liu Shui, director of enterprise research at the CIA. Existing policies grant limited support to small- and medium-sized private real estate firms, which are still facing fundraising difficulties, Liu noted.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Futura Costaglione