Shares of mortgage lender Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd (DHFL) fell as much as 18% on Thursday, their biggest intraday fall since February, a day after two leading ratings agencies downgraded the company to their lowest on the lender missing payments on bonds due this week.
ICRA cut its rating on the company's paper to [ICRA]D from [ICRA]A4, while Crisil downgraded to 'CRISIL D' from 'CRISIL A4+', implying that the company was in default or expected to be in default soon.
This was Crisil's fifth rating cut on the company's paper this year and ICRA's fourth, highlighting the problems in India's shadow banking sector that has struggled since a series of defaults at Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd last year.
"The downgrade reflects delays in debt servicing by DHFL on some of its non-convertible debentures (NCDs) - not rated by Crisil - because of inadequate liquidity," Crisil said.
The Economic Times reported on Wednesday that DHFL had missed a deadline on interest payment on some outstanding bonds.
DHFL is in talks to meet its over 10 billion rupees ($144.19 million) obligation before the seven-day grace period and its financing could come in by the end of this week, the report also said.
The lender, which stopped taking new deposits and blocked premature withdrawals last month, said it was taking steps to make the payment on time and that the delay did not amount to a default.
Shares of DHFL were trading 13% down at 97.2 rupees at 0352 GMT.
