Is the 1984 hit single by Alison Moyet. At current levels, the Ringgit trades at RM4.46 to the US Dollar.
Does this mean, most Malaysian companies are going to get bashed trying to service their debts.
Will they end up being "All Cried Out"? The answer is a surprisingly NO . The reason being, that despite the Ringgit being the most hard hit among Adrian currencies, our government's prudence in creating an a Ringgit denominated debt market, has saved Malaysian companies.
Below is a list from Bloomberg on the most Dollar denominated indebted companies in South East Asia. And not surprisingly, NO Malaysian companies make the list, not even 1MDB :
Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.: “The Singtel group (excluding our regional mobile associates), has foreign currencies borrowings which have been hedged into the functional currency of the respective borrowing entities,” said Lim Cheng Cheng, chief financial officer at the Singaporean phone company. “We have in place a euro medium term note (EMTN) bond program which enables us to tap various bond markets based on our funding plans. As an example, in October this year, we issued a US$500 million bond at a coupon of 2.375%, and this has been hedged back to Singapore dollars. Hence, from a debt management perspective, the impact of a rising U.S. dollar is not significant.”
PT Bumi Resources: “Our bonds are fully in U.S. dollars and so is our accounting currency," said Dileep Srivastava, director at the Indonesian coal mining firm. “So the rupiah exchange variations have no impact on us. We also have a natural hedge - our revenue is in dollars and 90 percent of our costs are in dollars.
"Olam International Ltd.: An external spokesperson for the Singapore-based food traders, one of the world’s biggest, declined to comment.
BOC Aviation Ltd.: “We have a massive warchest both to support our capex and to refinance our existing commitments," said Timothy Ross, head of investor relations and corporate communications at the aircraft leasing company based in Singapore. “There is no issue with regards to refinancing any of the debt as and when it comes due. All of our assets are in U.S. dollars. Our revenues are all in U.S. dollars and 92 percent of our costs are in U.S. dollars. We’re a pure U.S. dollar play which I guess if anything should make us more attractive given the strength of the U.S. dollar.”
Alliance Global Group Inc.: No one was available to comment when the Quezon City, Philippines-based company was contacted by phone. There was no reply to an e-mail to the investor relations department of the conglomerate, which has interests ranging from food and beverages to gaming.
Perusahaan Listrik Negara: No one was available to comment when the Indonesian government-owned electricity distributor was called, and there was no reply to an e-mail.
Berau Coal Energy Tbk: No one was available to comment when the Indonesian coal mining group was called. Jakarta-based corporate secretary Gamal Wanengpati couldn’t be reached for comment.
SM Investments Corp.: “Our dollar debt is fully hedged. The drop in local currencies does not affect the debt service of our foreign currency debts. There will be no increase in the debt service cost because our foreign currency debts are fully hedged including the interest cost,” said Jose Sio, chief financial officer of the Philippines conglomerate with interests in property, retail and banking. “Current and future refinancing activities are focused on raising in local peso currency. Example of this is our 20 billion peso corporate bonds to be issued during the first week of December 2016.”
Travellers International Hotel Group Inc.: “We’ve ruled out hedging because for us it’s slightly too late,” said Bernard Than, chief financial officer at the Philippines-based owner and operator of Resorts World Manila. “We’ve always marked to market the forex loss over the years. For the forseeable future, we’ll most likely just pay it off using peso debt.” He added that the company has enough credit lines to pay off the upcoming bond and plans to focus on local funding in the future. “We rather put our faith in things we can control rather than relying on a forex loan or forex bond where we are at the mercy of the exchange rates,” said Than. “We rather not put our faith in that any more and switch everything to local lending.”
Carmen Copper Corp.: This Philippines-based firm has operating rights over the Toledo copper mine. Parent company Atlas Consolidated Mining & Development Corp. this month approved a plan to refinance $300 million of bonds at its wholly-owned unit Carmen Copper. No one was available to comment when Atlas Consolidated Mining was called. There was no immediate reply to an e-mail to the investor relations department of Atlas Consolidated Mining. Two calls to Fernando Rimando, Carmen Copper’s chief financial officer, weren’t answered.
