HSH Nordbank’s solvency improvements increase likelihood of privatisation, a credit positive
Last Wednesday, German Landesbank HSH Nordbank AG (Baa3/Baa3 developing, b32 ), a leading ship lender, published third-quarter 2017 results that showed material improvements in its ongoing balance sheet repair. HSH’s improved solvency supports its expectation that its privatisation, which must be signed by 28 February 2018 for the bank to stay in business, is feasible. If the privatisation were to fail, the bank would have to cease new underwriting and enter a potentially costly unwinding that would harm creditors if it is not supported by any of its key stakeholders. However, on 27 October, several equity investors submitted binding offers to buy the bank, getting HSH past a crucial hurdle in the privatisation process. HSH pared its nonperforming exposures (NPEs) by €5.5 billion, or 38%, to €9.1 billion in the nine months to September 2017 through asset sales, recoveries and foreclosures. The swift reduction in underperforming assets this year, after several years of slow progress in asset risk reduction, exceeded our expectations. We consider the significant reduction a major achievement, especially since it was managed against the headwinds of new defaults in the bank’s ship finance book, which totalled €11.9 billion as of September 2017. Improved coverage of its NPEs as of September, with risk provisions at 55% of NPEs, versus 48% at year-end 2016, implies that the risk from bad assets, although still prominent, is more contained. The coverage ratio for €5.9 billion of ship finance NPEs was 62%. HSH has simultaneously improved its regulatory capital and leverage ratios, which is positive for creditors whether HSH successfully privatises or not. As the exhibit shows, the bank no longer relies on its €10 billion asset guaranty, which for many years was a vital pillar of its loss-absorption capacity and regulatory capital. This is an important achievement because we believe that investors will expect the bank to carry on business with a simple, less opaque capital structure based on cash capital rather than complex, capitalsubstituting instruments. After it was first installed in 2009, the €10 billion assets guaranty has proved so complex that HSH struggled to correctly estimate its future capital needs. The miscalculations led to a premature reduction of the €10 billion guaranty amount in 2011. The subsequent reinstatement in 2013 triggered the latest state aid proceedings, which resulted in the European Union’s competition authorities imposing several compensation measures, including HSH’s privatization.
Notwithstanding the financial progress and the binding offers that are in place, HSH will still have to clear several more obstacles on its path to a successful privatisation, mostly after the 28 February deadline to sign the privatisation. The obstacles include the formal approvals of the European Union supervisory and competition authorities of key features of the transaction, in particular HSH’s proposed business model and its viability. To satisfy the authorities, HSH must present a compelling business plan for achieving sustainable profitability, which must meet the authorities’ (undisclosed) return targets. In addition, we expect that a final cleanup of HSH’s balance sheet from legacy NPEs will be necessary because the NPEs to gross loans ratio remains far higher than those of HSH’s German peers.