Aquila European Renewables (AER), the UK-based green energy company that took on a secondary listing in the Irish stock market on Monday, currently has about €200 million of firepower to spend on projects, according to executives involved in the management of its portfolio.
Michael Anderson, a senior manager of German-based Aquila Capital, who is responsible for portfolio management at AER, said the company is in talks with lenders on raising some debt, as it has the ability to raise its borrowings to as much as 50 per cent of its gross assets from 33 per cent.
The company also has about €30 million of cash on its balance sheet, even after spending tens of millions this year buying back its own stock to take advantage of how its shares are trading at a discount to their intrinsic value. Its net asset value per share was 104.1 cents at the end of June, compared with a bid price of 80c being quoted in Dublin on Monday.
“If you do the math on [the financial reserves and leeway], that would suggest firepower of about €200 million,” Mr Anderson told The Irish Times.
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AER, which floated in London in May 2019, had a wind, solar and hydro power portfolio with a capacity of 463.8 megawatts across Scandinavia, Greece, Spain and Portugal at the end of June, according to its latest financial report. It stated at the time of the initial public offering that it would target projects in the Republic.
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While Lars Meisinger, head of Aquila Capital’s international client advisory and corporate development, said that AER has an “enormous pipeline” of potential future projects, the Republic does not feature on the current list. Most of the major opportunities are currently in southern Europe, the executives said.
AER chose to list in Dublin, however, to enhance the company’s appeal to investors across Europe while being quoted in an English-speaking market, according to the executives.
Mr Meisinger said it is important that AER’s portfolio remains diversified geographically across Europe.
“We are navigating the complexity of tax regimes, regulatory regimes across Europe and each government is choosing to go a different path,” he said. “You don’t want to be exposed to a single country. You want to basically diversify your investments across power markets.
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“The biggest topic that concerns us across Europe is the bureaucracy in permitting. The European Commission has been articulating the urgency of accelerating the energy transition to meet Europe’s [green energy] plans. But, on a national level – and on a very local level – it is not being done so quickly. Part of it is that bureaucracy is not catching up with requirements.”
AER has become part of a small club of renewable-energy focused companies listed in Dublin, including wind and solar energy group Greencoat Renewables and energy storage developer Corre Energy.
