Hyderabad-based renewable energy company Mytrah Energy Private Limited said it was talking to private equity investors besides looking at other options to raise about $300 million in the next one year. The company, which has recently signed a new rupee term loans of close to Rs 2,600 crore (around $380 million) to refinance senior loans from 22 banks, is looking at retiring $100 million of mezzanine debt taken from IDFC Alternatives. The rest of the amount would be used on solar power project on hand, according to Mytrah Energy managing director Vikram Kailas. “We are talking to various PE funds in India and abroad as part of our fund raising exercise. We are also considering other options even though the partnership with private investors would give us more comfort,” Kailas told Business Standard while refusing to comment on the mandate being reportedly given to investment bankers to prepare draft prospectus for an IPO.
Mytrah’s portfolio of wind energy capacity recently touched $917.2 million. It has also signed power purchase agreement(PPA) for 422 mw of solar projects in Telangana after it has announced its foray into solar power. The funds so raised would be partly utilised for development of 500 mw of solar capacity, according to Kailas. The company had so fair raised $ 825 million in debt of which $ 750 million in India and $175 million through Asian Development Bank (ADB). Apart from regular debt, the company had raised $ 300 million in equity and mezzanine funding mostly from IDFC.
By signing the new rupee term loan agreements Mytrah was able to reduce the interest rate by an average of 140 basis points besides extending the average maturity of debt by approximately 3 years, according to the company. It has reported a 52 percent increase in revenues at $ 49.66 million for the half year ending June, 2016 compared to the corresponding period previous year. Though the preferred route for growth continues to be by setting up own projects in wind and solar power it would also open to any inorganic opportunity in future, according to Kailas. “So far we have not looked at such opportunities but that may change tomorrow,” he said.
While the performance of wind assets surpassed the company’s expectations in terms of efficiency, load factor and maintenance, it would require a couple of years to assess the same with regard to solar projects as the company has just entered this sector, according to Kailas. Mytrah was planning to scale up the solar power capacity to the level of its wind power portfolio going forward. Meanwhile, the power utilities continued to be the sole consumers of the power generated by the company though a small fraction of its generation has been tied up for third party sales. “We prefer power utilities as our consumers as except in Rajasthan and Maharashtra, the utilities in all other states in the country have been prompt in settling the bills. In some cases our bills are settled within a week. UDAI scheme had in fact turned around most of the power utilities,” Vikram Kailas said.
Source:BS
