Adani Ports To Prepay Rs 1,000 Crore On Commercial Papers Due In March

Adani Ports has commercial papers worth Rs 2,000 crore due to mature in March, data from information service provider Prime Database showed

Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone, a group firm of Adani Group, plans to prepay Rs 1,000 crore ($120.8 million) in commercial papers maturing in March, said a company spokesperson as reported by news agency Reuters.

In an email response the spokesperson said, "This part prepayment is from the existing cash balance and funds generated from the business operations."

According to the report, Adani Ports has commercial papers worth Rs 2,000 crore due to mature in March, data from information service provider Prime Database showed. It had cash and cash equivalents of Rs 6,257 crore as of December 31, per its latest quarterly report.

Adani Ports has also paid Rs 1,500 crore to SBI Mutual Fund on commercial papers that matured on Monday, as scheduled, it said.

On Monday, some media reported that Adani Ports has repaid Rs 500 crore to Aditya Birla Sun Life Mutual Fund against maturing commercial papers. Both the fund houses did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last week, Reuters reported Adani Enterprises and Adani Ports are likely to repay their short-term commercial papers debt, instead of rolling them over.

Adani Ports said in an analysts' call earlier this month that it is considering repaying debt of about Rs 5,000 crore in FY24, without specifying which bonds it would repay. This, it said, would improve its net debt to EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) ratio to about 2.5 from more than three currently.

"Our main objective is that we are generating cash. We want to use that money to repay the debt after meeting all the growth capex," D Muthukumaran, chief financial officer of Adani Ports, had said in the call on February 7.

Meanwhile, Gautam Adani has hired top-shelf US crisis communication and legal teams, scrapped a $850 million coal plant purchase, reined in expenses, repaid some debt and promises to repay more, according to a report by news agency Bloomberg.

The conglomerate is eyeing to claw back the narrative with this playbook and calm jittery investors and lenders after US-based Hindenburg Research on January 24 accused it of accounting fraud, stock manipulation, and other corporate governance lapses. Adani Group, however, denies these allegations.