GetBack fails to make payments on its bonds

According to portal Obligacje.pl, troubled WSE-listed debt collector GetBack did not make the interest payments on its PLN 16.3 million GB21019 bonds. According to the website, the quarterly payments estimated at PLN 230,000k were not deposited by the Monday deadline, and the Central Securities Depository (KDPW) has asked the company to clarify the situation. This is the first instance of GetBack bonds listed on the WSE-operated Catalyst bond market for which the interest payments have not been made. Last week, the company failed to redeem PLN 5.5 million worth of bonds owned by investment fund Quercus. According to Obligacje.pl, bonds issued by GetBack are currently worth PLN 1.7-1.9 billion with over PLN 1 billion being owned by retail investors. “Based on the knowledge about the size of average subscriptions for bonds in public issues (about PLN 200,000), we can estimate the number of individual investors with GetBack bonds for at least 5,000. However, if the average subscription amount would be lower and amounted to 50,000 PLN (the February public issue of GetBack bonds had the average value of the subscription at PLN 56k), then the number of individual investors would increase to 20,000, but probably it is not more than 30,000, and the most probable value is several thousand investors, not counting several thousand who invested in debt funds managed by GetBack,” Emil Szweda from Obligacje.pl told the Polish Press Agency PAP.