Goldman Sachs promoted ReNew Power Pvt Ltd raised $325 million via off shore bond sale. The dollar bond offer was oversubscribed six times with total offer book at $2 billion.
This is the first successful bond issuance by an Indian renewable company since the Covid-induced economic slowdown. In June, SoftBank Energy, a Indian clean energy unit of Japan based SoftBank withdrew its $600-million bond issuance due to investors’ concerns on the price-cost ratio of its solar projects.
Company executives said this was also the cheapest bond offering by any renewable company. The bonds when issued were priced at 5.875 per cent. However, the rate was reduced to 5.375 per cent, but the investors continued to book, said the executive.
“We were monitoring the market when it got shut due to Covid. We were ready with portfolio of assets for refinancing. Lot of investors came in from the US and there was an overwhelming demand from Asian markets – almost 56 per cent of the total book including US based investors with presence in Asia, such as PIMCO and Blackrock. Demand came in from more than 130 accounts,” Kailash Vaswani, President, Corporate Finance at ReNew Power told Business Standard.
This is ReNew’s second bond offering in this calendar year. It raised $450 million via dollar bonds in January when it was oversubscribed three times.
D Muthukumaran, chief finance officer, ReNew Power told the paper, “We like to have diversified sources of capital. Currently we have about $2 billion from the bond market including the latest bond, out of the $4 billion of total debt. The objective is to free up limits for under construction assets and when the assets are in steady stage, refinance them in the dollar bond market,” said
ReNew Power has a total installed capacity of 5.4 GW of solar and wind power. It also has 4.6 Gw of renewable power capacity under construction. Apart from Goldman Sachs, ReNew is backed by equity investors such as Tokyo based JERA, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Global Environment Fund.
In July ReNew Power announced its entry into solar manufacturing on Thursday. The company has indicated it will invest close to Rs 1,500-2,000 crore for its manufacturing unit of 2 Gw of solar cells and modules. This paper had earlier reported the company’s expansion into the power transmission sector and to have a complete energy supply chain.
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