Greenko Energy Holdings, one of the major 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 said. Ebitda (operating profit) for the company was $625 million in FY22, and it is anticipated that it would end fiscal year 2023 with $650 million on revenues of $720 million.
These papers were issued in 2015 and are among the first high-yield bond instruments from India. They are connected to a "limited group" of 500MW of renewable assets. This event comes shortly after it fully redeemed all of the outstanding $435 million bonds that were set to mature in March after refinancing them with a bridge loan from major international banks like JP Morgan, Barclays, and DBS Bank in the face of rising interest rates. Investors received full payment of their principle, as well as accrued and unpaid interest. These two developments will help the
company extinguish $1 billion of its outstanding bonds. 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.
The business announced last month that it would spend 10,000 crore to build a pumped storage project (PSP) close to Gandhi Sagar in Madhya Pradesh's Neemuch District. In order to jointly manufacture at least 250,000 tonnes of green ammonia annually starting in 2022, it teamed with Singapore-based Keppel Infrastructure Holdings (Keppel Infrastructure). In September, Indian producers of green hydrogen, ammonia, and similar derivatives ZeroC and Greenko subsidiary joined to produce green hydrogen, ammonia, and related derivatives for both the domestic and international markets.
