Bloomberg: Adani Said to Decide Against Bid for Power Trader PTC Stake

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has decided against bidding for a stake in state-backed electricity trader PTC India Ltd., according to people familiar with the matter. US short seller Hindenburg Research in late January accused the Adani Group of market manipulation and accounting fraud. While the conglomerate denied all the allegations, the slump in 10 Adani companies that has now wiped more than $130 billion from their combined market value. Emma O’Brien reports on Bloomberg Television.

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Transcript

So this still again you know dovetailing with the overall strategy and the reigning in that the group is taking yeah I mean this is all part of the plan we saw them scrapping a purchase of an 850 Million Dollar Coal plant the other day as well uh you know we’re being told

By sources that they are looking to reign in capex and some of the more um you know Capital intensive units like adani green adani power ones where there had been quite ambitious plans at the same time they are continuing with this process of pre-paying and repaying a

Whole lot of debt that seems to be very big part of how they’re trying to portray themselves as this very good corporate citizen is the opposite basically of what Hindenburg had alleged you know a month ago now which set off this uh you know storm against them

Yeah and Emma just walk us through just some of these free paying of debt right so adani ports unit says they they did prepay that short-term debt worth about 121 million dollars how is this part of that broader game plan yeah I mean I think you’ve seen uh you

Know five or six times now where they’ve either prepaid or or you know very diligently repaid uh debt that has come to you since the Hindenburg report came out uh debt was a very big part of that their leverage has concerned uh people that watch adani for some time long

Before the Hindenburg report uh so this seems to be a very key part of their fight back uh which alongside that we understand uh more broadly they’re bringing in or at least talking to a bunch of international uh Communications crisis experts they have uh brought in text the uh International PR firm we

Understand they’re working with one of the Spin Doctors that worked with wework for example so they are sort of looking to bring in some of these International big guns alongside this more methodical approach to raining in capex paying back debt being overtly a good corporate citizen there we continue to see

Volatility when it comes to the share prices of the listed units but really there’s been one standout that’s bore the brunt of the sell-off yeah I mean this is a dining total gas which is a utility that they own and it’s down 76 percent may go down further today and

It’s interesting because in the Hindenburg report they said there are about seven adani units that were about 85 percent overvalued so you know gaining up on that number there I mean it’s got twin issues in that it’s it’s not very liquid it was the most highly valued of the adani units pre-hindenburg

And it’s also suffering from a drop in European gas prices and sort of a lack of dynamism in that market as well so that’s the one to watch there adani total gas

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