DHFL To Bring In Strategic Partner To Boost Shareholder Confidence

Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd (DHFL) has initiated measures to rope in a strategic partner and divest non-core assets even as its top management on Monday assured investors that the company is well capitalised and has enough liquidity to service its debt obligations.

The housing finance company has been left reeling by allegations made by news portal Cobrapost accusing its primary promoters of siphoning off more than ₹31,000 crore of public money through secured loans and advances to shell companies, round-tripping, tax avoidance and insider trading.

The company’s management alleged that the news portal’s so-called ‘expose’ is based on a frivolous complaint filed by one Vikas Shekhar, who claimed to be a DHFL shareholder. They added that the said Vikas Shekhar is not a shareholder, borrower or lender to DHFL.

In their second conference call with investors’ in the last one week, DHFL’s top management, led by Kapil Wadhawan, Chairman and Managing Director, observed that over the past few years, his company has been focussed on professionalising its management to enable the growth of a retail franchise.

“The events (the ripple impact of debt defaults by IL&FS and some of its arms on non-banking finance companies) since September 21, 2018 have accelerated the process of realigning the ownership and management to bring in a broad-based professional ownership…to enhance stakeholders’ confidence.”

“We intend to take this further to pave the way for on-boarding a strategic partner. And we have already started parallel discussions to achieve this over the next 90 days. This is not an afterthought but something which we started off post September 21, 2018,” said Wadhawan.

“We want to keep the engine running…we want to pare our cost-to-income ratio…we are looking at a clear origination to sell down model as our business model,” said Wadhawan.

Expressing shock and surprise that credit rating agencies announced a re-rating of DHFL’s debt in view of recent events, DHFL’s top boss emphasised that these actions are not a reflection of any deterioration in his company’s asset or credit quality.

“It is more in response to the decline in our share price and the rise in bond yields. This is what the rating agencies have observed in their rationale. We continue to be well capitalised. We have enough liquidity to service all our obligations,” he said.

Wadhawan said that from the time of the Cobrapost press conference (January 29), DHFL’s stock price has been negatively impacted by almost 50 per cent. He underscored that DHFL has till date not delayed a single rupee to any of its creditors.