Steinhoff’s a Black Box Too Big to Ignore for Vulture Investors
Steinhoff’s a Black Box Too Big to Ignore for Vulture Investors
(Bloomberg) -- Steinhoff International Holdings NV may look like a non-starter for most investors: its former chief executive is under investigation for fraud and the new managers still can’t explain what went wrong. Then there’s the matter of what happened to $5 billion in cash.
Yet buyers have piled in.
Hedge funds now hold most of Steinhoff’s 3.5 billion euros ($4.3 billion) of bonds and more than 1.5 billion euros of bank loans and private debt, according to four people familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because the matter is private.
Their bet: a global retailer with businesses on four continents must have enough assets to offset losses they still don’t know about. What’s more, such fat targets don’t come around often enough for distressed-debt specialists to let Steinhoff go without taking a bite.
“If you are a big distressed-debt fund, then you must buy it, even if it’s little more than a blind punt,” Louis Gargour, owner of London-based credit fund LNG Capital, who says Steinhoff’s finances were too opaque and complex for him to touch. “There are few opportunities as big as Steinhoff out there.”
Steinhoff cratered Dec. 6 after acknowledging financial irregularities. Its stock plunged more than 90 percent and in the aftermath the billionaire Christo Wiese quit as chairman and authorities in its home base of South Africa undertook an investigation.
Three months on, even creditors who signed a non-disclosure agreement with the company haven’t obtained material information over the nature of the accounting issues, people familiar with the matter said. In a Jan. 26 meeting in London, they were told to wait for PricewaterhouseCoopers’ forensic analysis, they said. While the company can’t say when the investigation will be over, it will have to come before more than 1 billion euros of loans come due in August, analysts say.
The problems appeared to be concentrated in the central European business and resulted in an overstatement of assets, revenue, and profit figures, stretching back for years, the company said on Feb. 28. The PwC investigation is digging deeper into off-balance sheet structures and transactions with related parties.
Even as investigations geared up, investors were pawing over Steinhoff’s damaged securities.
Bondholders, which included the European Central Bank, took losses of as much as 50 percent to unload paper in December that just days earlier was trading near face value, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Banks and private debtholders including Commerzbank AG and Natixis SA followed in January, offloading loans at discounts of between 20 and 35 percent. U.S. banks took losses of $1 billion on Steinhoff in the fourth quarter alone, mostly related to Wiese’s margin loans.
In a report published on Dec. 6, short-seller Viceroy Research alleged that Steinhoff’s holding company was hiding losses in entities owned by associates of former CEO Markus Jooste. Viceroy’s analysis concluded that Steinhoff’s earnings may be at least 1 billion euros lower after adjustments, wiping out most of the company’s expected profits.
“It is possible this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Viceroy said in the report.
The dealings between Steinhoff’s units and non-related parties are often blurred.
Take Alvaglen Estates Limited, a Bahamas-based subsidiary of Steinhoff’s real estate arm, which owns properties in the U.K. At least two of Alvaglen’s assets in the U.K. are managed by Formal Investments Limited of the British Virgin Islands, according to Land Registry records. Steinhoff units operate out of warehouses that appeared in Formal’s portfolio, which was available on its website until last week.
Formal’s chairman is Malcolm King, who is also a family friend of Jooste and a director of the company that manages a wine estate in Stellenbosch formerly owned by Wiese, according to South African newspapers and records. Malcolm King didn’t return emails and phone calls through Formal.
Steinhoff said in an email to Bloomberg News that Formal manages certain Alvaglen properties in the U.K. but “to the best of our knowledge, Steinhoff has no other ongoing business relationships with Formal or Malcolm King.”
In at least one case, the complex structure of Steinhoff could play in favor of creditors.
Creditors including Attestor Capital, Centerbridge Partners, Farallon Capital Management, Silver Point Capital, and York Capital Management bought a large portion of 1.6 billion euros of convertible bonds due in 2021 and 2022. Bond documents show the notes are guaranteed by a predecessor of Steinhoff’s parent company, a unit now called Steinhoff International Holdings Proprietary Limited, SIHPL, which management defined as a “shell company” in a Dec. 19 presentation.
That “shell company” is owed billions by the profitable South African division. The company confirmed in a presentation published on Feb. 23 that SIHPL has a loan claim worth 24.6 billion rand ($2.1 billion) against the South African part of the Steinhoff group. The price of 1.1 billion euros of bonds due August 2022 spiked 10 cents on the euro to about 75 cents on the next trading day, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Representatives at Silver Point and York declined to comment. Officials at Attestor, Centerbridge, and Farallon didn’t return emails and calls seeking comment.
Others entangled in the complex web may not fare as well. Take the 4.8 billion euros of loans and bonds issued by Steinhoff Europe AG, the holding unit of operating divisions in Europe. The company has several sub-holdings, some of which booked loans worth billions that are difficult to trace. Austria-registered Genesis Investment Holding GmbH has 2.2 billion euros of liabilities to unspecified affiliates. Lower down the chain, AIH Investment Holdings AG reported 1.4 billion euros of loans to affiliates and 356 million euros of receivables in 2016.
One of the crucial unknowns is the status of Steinhoff’s cash holdings. The retailer reported 3.1 billion euros in cash as late as March 2017. It also raised $1.2 billion in the September initial public offering of its South African arm. In December, when management said that investors shouldn’t rely on its old financial reports, it didn’t say how much money was in its coffers.
Steinhoff then raised credit lines of about $700 million for units in the U.K., U.S., and France from Davidson Kempner Capital Management, Barclays Plc, and Tikehau Capital SCA. Even still, “work remains to be done” to ensure Steinhoff’s businesses have the necessary funding, management said on Feb. 28.
“Steinhoff said they had billions in cash last year, and raised more after the latest report, but still went out to raise new money to keep the company afloat,” said Anthony Giret, a credit analyst at SpreadResearch in France. “The company must answer very substantial questions before we have an idea of how much money creditors could recover.”
--With assistance from Samuel Dodge Boris Groendahl Jack Sidders Franz Wild and Jacqueline Poh
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Abigail Moses at amoses5@bloomberg.net, James Hertling
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