Greenko Energy Holdings, one of the largest clean energy companies in the country, is set to prepay a tranche of $500 million of its dollar bonds that would mature in August this year using its near-term cash flows, people familiar with the matter told ET. The company clocked $625 million in Ebitda (operating profit) in FY22 and is expected to close fiscal year 2023 at $650 million on revenues of $720 million.
These papers, linked to a “restricted group” of 500MW of renewable assets and issued in 2015, are among the first high-yield bond instruments from India.
This development comes just days after it fully redeemed the entire outstanding $435 million bonds, due for maturity in March, having refinanced them through a bridge loan from global banks JP Morgan, Barclays, DBS Bank, among others, amid hardening rates, ET reported on February 22. It paid investors in full their principal amount together with accrued and unpaid interest.
These two developments will help the company extinguish $1 billion of its outstanding bonds.
Greenko declined to comment.
The Hyderabad-based company is among the largest issuer of green bonds at $4 billion, backed by GIC of Singapore, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Orix Corporation of Japan .
Greenko’s current operating portfolio is 7.3GW from 114 projects spread across 15 states.
“Bond markets have been the worst affected in 2022, both on the supply and yield sides,” said the CFO of a renewable company who did not wish to be quoted. “If Indian corporates start pre-paying, then 2023 will hopefully restore the confidence of the bond markets toward energy transition stories from emerging markets like India. In the past, Indian state-owned or private banks were aggressive in the project finance market but in the last few years, it has largely been funded by the global bond markets. But with several renewable companies missing their financial targets, the market sentiments have been weak and that, in turn, has seen muted capacity.”
Over the years from being a pure-play utility player, Greenko has pivoted toward offering energy as a service, with storage solutions, pumped hydro helping in industrial decarbonisation. Greenko has now moved to green hydrogen and ammonia and then speciality complex chemicals.
Last month, the company said it would be investing ₹10,000 crore to set up a pumped storage project (PSP) near Gandhi Sagar in Neemuch District of Madhya Pradesh. In 2022, it partnered with Singapore-based Keppel Infrastructure Holdings (Keppel Infrastructure) to jointly produce at least 250,000 tonnes of green ammonia per year. In September, Korean steelmaker Posco Holdings partnered with Greenko subsidiary ZeroC for producing green hydrogen, ammonia and related derivatives in India for both the domestic and export markets.
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