Mytrah Energy plans up to $300 million fundraising
Renewable energy producer Mytrah Energy (India) Ltd is considering raising $100-200 million by selling shares through an initial public offering (IPO) or to private equity investors, managing director Vikram Kailas said.
Separately, the company plans to provide an exit opportunity to existing investor IDFC Ltd, which owns a stake that is valued at about $100 million, Kailas said.
“We are looking to replace IDFC by March 2017 and we are also looking for some growth capital. Now, that can happen through several means; either it could be a private equity offering or it could be an IPO or it could be something else. We don’t know which mode we will take, but we are definitely in early stages of evaluating how to raise around $200-300 million,” he said.
Investors Apollo Global Management Llc, Merrill Lynch International (a unit of Bank of America Merrill Lynch) and IDFC together hold about 25% in the Indian unit, while founder Ravi Kailas and family own the rest. The parent company, Mytrah Energy Ltd, is listed on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.
IDFC’s infrastructure fund, under asset management unit IDFC Alternatives, had in 2011 invested Rs.350 crore in Mytrah through a structured finance transaction that will need an exit before March 2017, while Apollo Global and Merrill Lynch International are going to hold their investment in the renewable energy firm till 2020, Kailas said.
Kailas estimates India will add between 5,000 megawatts (MW) to 10,000MW of combined capacity in wind and solar energy every year. “We aspire to do 5-15% of that capacity addition a year.”
The company, one of the largest in the sector, operates about 920MW of wind energy capacity and recently won projects for about 500MW of solar energy capacity. In April, the Asian Development Bank approved a loan facility of up to $175 million to help fund Mytrah’s portfolio of new wind and solar projects.
A number of renewable energy producers are also looking for investors and partners to complete their pipeline of committed projects. India has added solar capacity at the fastest rate so far in 2016 and is expected to become the fourth largest solar market this year, overtaking the UK, Germany and France, said a report released in April by consulting firm Bridge to India.
Source-livemint
