Our Daily Saab: Dark Clouds Gather Around Saab's White Knight
Pangda, one of Saab’s presumptive white knights, could itself be facing financial difficulties. Both the staid government-owned China Daily and the more outspoken Taiwan-based China Times report strange financial going-ons at PangDa. Says China Times:
“Shareholders and securities analysts are scratching their heads over how a top automobile marketing group in China managed to “burn” a huge fund of 6 billion yuan (US$944 million) in just six months. Many have speculated that Pang Da Automobile Trade Co has shifted to financial leasing services to cope with stalling car sales caused by the government’s credit-tightening regulations.”
According to China Daily, $659 million had been “used to repay bank loans and supplement working capital.” China Times reports a lot of the money as lost and says:
“Corporate executives have dodged the questions about what happened to the capital from the initial IPO fund.”
Further digging revealed:
“The group has been saddled with financial leasing operations exceeding 2 billion yuan (US$314.8 million), although the company did not include this information in its IPO prospectus.”
Even after the record IPO, Pangda finds itself short of funds.To rectify this, a corporate bond issue of nearly $600 million has been approved.
For years, Pangda has operated a successful auto financing operation in the usually credit-adverse China. It is a risky undertaking. In the “Jidong Mode” of car financing, named after the predecessor company of Pangda, the dealer guarantees the bank loan of the car. For years, PangDa has been running a giant Buy here, pay here operation, replete with GPS transmitters in cars, company-own credit enforcers and repossessions. When a customer defaults, PangDa pays off the loan, repossesses the car and sells it to recoup part of the loss. This model worked fine during times of easy money, but those times are over. Says China Times:
“Securities analysts said the newly disclosed financial information means that the business model followed by the company is no longer as effective, as the central government has squeezed credit to fight inflation and dampen speculative real estate purchases.
Growing numbers of enterprises in China have complained of the increasing difficulty of getting bank loans as financial institutions have also found themselves short of funds.”
Sound familiar?
A lot of these reports are based on an in-depth piece in the printed version of China’s 21st Century Herald, which keeps good relations with the top echelons of the auto industry.
With money getting scarcer by the day, it did not help that Pangda had already written off “bad debts of 45 million euros which were paid to SAAB as the latter may become bankrupt.”
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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So lemme get this straight, Pangda wants to buy a car company nobody in China has ever heard of that's in serious financial trouble itself, and maybe has a new platform ready for future vehicles -- and maybe not. Then Pangda's gonna sell these cars nobody ever heard of to Chinese consumers who don't like to buy on credit -- during a down market. But let's just say, for the sake of argument, Panda is able to A) convince Chinese consumers to buy a quirky Swedish car brand, B) on credit the old buy-here, pay-here (acc'ts receivable) way. Unlikely, but hey. It's a set-up to this... C) Then a whole bunch of people default on their Saab payment schedule and D) Pangda goes out and re-po's a whole bunch of Saabs they just sold to try to recoup some of their losses, which apparently, have been pretty steep of late. Now, we got a whole 'nuther problem. E) What could be worth less than a re-po'ed Saab in China? I mean, could anything possibly lose its value faster? Maybe a used stamp, but even those might become collectable some day.
Block that metaphor!