China's Country Garden looks to sell stake in chip maker CXMT as winding-up adjourned

Defaulted Chinese developer Country Garden Holdings is looking to dispose of a stake in chip company ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) via its venture capital arm, as it struggles to pare assets and work out its debts amid slumping home sales. The company also received seven weeks of breathing room on a liquidation hearing in a Hong Kong court.

Country Garden Venture Capital, an investment unit of Country Garden that was founded in 2019, is planning to dispose of its undisclosed stake in CXMT, according to people familiar with this matter, who did not disclose further details.

Country Garden Venture Capital holds a 1.68 per cent stake in CXMT, according to Chinese corporate data service Qichacha. In late March, CXMT raised 10.8 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) in a round of fundraising, pushing its valuation close to 140 billion yuan.

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Once the biggest developer in China, Country Garden has been struggling with a liquidity crisis since last October when it defaulted on a dollar-denominated bond, forcing offshore creditors into talks to reorganise their debts. It also faces a winding-up petition in Hong Kong due to non-repayment of a HK$1.6 billion (US$205 million) loan plus accrued interest.

The stake disposal is part of the developer's strategy to optimise its asset-liability structure, including evaluation of its portfolio and potential asset disposal, according to an employee with knowledge of the matter.

The cash-strapped developer reported on Tuesday that its contracted sales for May slumped 76 per cent year on year to 4.3 billion yuan, adding to a year-on-year decline of 83 per cent in April.

However, its May sales increased 11.4 per cent compared with April, after Beijing launched a historic rescue package to shore up the battered real estate segment.

Hong Kong's High Court on Wednesday ordered a further adjournment of the liquidation petition, shifting a hearing to July 29 from June 11, according to an exchange filing on Thursday.

Country Garden had 1.36 trillion yuan in total liabilities on June 30, 2023, according to its latest published accounts. This included 258 billion yuan of bonds and bank borrowings.

The developer did not file its annual 2023 report by April 30 under Hong Kong stock exchange listing rules.

CXMT launched a memory chip of the type used in AI applications in December. Photo: CXMT alt=CXMT launched a memory chip of the type used in AI applications in December. Photo: CXMT>

CXMT and Country Garden Venture Capital did not respond to requests for comment.

State-backed CXMT leads development of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips in China, which are ubiquitous in consumer electronics, servers and data centres.

The company, founded in 2016 and based in Hefei, in eastern China's Anhui province, represents China's best hope to catch up with the world's top three DRAM makers, South Korean giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, and US-based Micron Technology.

Despite being hit by US export controls in 2022 targeting Chinese chip foundries, CXMT has been working on its own high-bandwidth memory chips tailored for artificial intelligence (AI) processors. It launched China's first DRAM chip of the low-power, double-data-rate-5 type in December.

The US Bureau of Industry and Security's October 2022 controls aim to cap China's logic chipmaking capabilities at the 14-nanometre (nm) production level, DRAM at 18-nm and 3D NAND flash memory chips at 128 layers.

Country Garden Venture Capital focuses on investments in areas such as technology, healthcare and consumption, according to its website. It has invested in more than 90 companies, including more than 10 that have gone on to make initial public offerings, it said.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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