HONG KONG: Agile, a Hong Kong listed mainland residential developer, will commence a series of roadshow presentations beginning today to institutional investors in Asia, Europe and the United States on the proposed issue of guaranteed senior notes, international credit rating agencies said yesterday. Agile says it intends to use the proceeds from the proposed notes issue to finance existing and new property projects.

Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P's) has assigned a "BB" rating to Agile's notes. Moody's gave a "Ba3" rating and maintained the company's ratings outlook as positive. "While Agile has achieved solid pre-sales in 2009 and maintained a strong level of balance sheet liquidity, we still expect the company to incur additional debt to fund its growth target in 2010," Moody's analyst Kaven Tsang said.

Guangdong-based Agile said earlier that its recurring net profit for the first half surged almost 145 percent to 706.15 million yuan, while revenue also leaped around 140 percent to 5.61 billion yuan, as it sold projects with larger floor area.

Chairman Zhen Zhoulin said Agile has targeted 2.05 million sq m of projects in 2009 and 2.52 million sq m in 2010, while the company currently has a land bank with gross floor area of around 29.6 million sq m.

(HK Edition 10/28/2009 page4)