Hotel Leela referred for CDR

Hotel Leelaventures, which had reported a loss for the December quarter, has been referred to the corporate debt restructuring (CDR) cell to recast debt of Rs 4,000 crore. The company’s interest cost went up five times to Rs 111.6 crore in the third quarter ended December 2011, from Rs 20 crore during the same period of the previous year.

The company has been trying to reduce debt and is in the process of selling its Kovalam property to Travancore Enter-prises which could have fetched Rs 500 cr. According to the company spokesperson, it has recently received Bombay High Court’s approval for the sale. Leela had acquired the Kovalam property in 2005 for Rs 150 cr.

Banking industry sources said the CDR cell will meet next week to discuss the broad contours for the debt recast. According to norms, a proposal gets admitted for CDR if 60 per cent of the lenders having 75 per cent of the asset approve.

The company had reported a net loss of Rs 99.7 cr for the third quarter. During the same period of the previous year, it had posted a profit of Rs 22 cr. Depreciation cost more than doubled to Rs 25 cr and employee cost increased to Rs 48.9 cr, compared with Rs 27 cr in the third quarter of last financial year. Net sales, however, increased 22 per cent to Rs 178 cr from Rs 146 cr.

ACCOUNT SUMMARY
Consolidated figures (Rs  crore)	FY ‘09-10	FY ‘10-11
Equity paid-up	75.56	77.57
Net worth	827.83	889.49
Total debt	2,878.66	3,803.14
Sales	449.18	525.82
PAT	41.04	37.82
Debt-equity ratio	3.48	3.89
ROCE (%)	2.48	2.72
RONW (%)	5.36	4.40

Earlier, a promoter group company had released 1.64 million shares from pledge. Hence, the pledged shares of promoters was over 92.2 million shares, accounting for 23.8 per cent of the total outstanding shares of the company, the company had informed the exchanges.

Performance so far Standalone figures for nine month ended  December 2011 (Rs  crore)
	2010	2011
Net sales	364.50	431.08
Net profit	26.53	-191.04
Total debt	3,351.69	4,295.15
(as on Sep)
As on March 6
Current market cap (Rs  crore)		1,343.73
Current market price on BSE		34.65

In FY12, corporate loans of Rs 52,000 cr have been referred to debt restructuring forum.

These loans are from the sectors like infrastructure, shipping, iron and steel, software and construction.