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Business News/ Companies / SunEdison ends deal to acquire Continuum
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SunEdison ends deal to acquire Continuum

The company also announced the sale of 425 MW of projects in India to TerraForm Global for $231 mn

The US-based company said it will go slow on acquisitions globally amid liquidity constraints to fund new capacity of 3.5-3.7 gigawatts (GW) in 2016.Premium
The US-based company said it will go slow on acquisitions globally amid liquidity constraints to fund new capacity of 3.5-3.7 gigawatts (GW) in 2016.

SunEdison Inc., the world’s largest renewable energy company, has terminated a deal to acquire Singapore-based Continuum Wind Energy Ltd, the company’s Asia Pacific chief said, on a day it announced the sale of 425 megawatts (MW) of projects in India to TerraForm Global Inc. for $231 million to pay down debt.

The US-based company will also go slow on acquisitions globally, said Pashupathy Gopalan, president, SunEdison Asia Pacific, amid liquidity constraints to fund new capacity of 3.5-3.7 gigawatts (GW) in 2016.

About $150 million of the sale price was paid on 20 November and a portion of that was used to pay down a margin loan to Deutsche Bank AG, according to a regulatory filing, reported by Bloomberg. Shares of SunEdison rose 6.2% in early trading in New York, on the news of the sale. Its shares are down 84% this year. SunEdison chief executive officer Ahmad Chatila said the obligation may be one of the factors affecting the developer’s performance.

The company has announced job cuts and walked away from other deals in the last two months. In June, it had said it would acquire Continuum Wind, which has assets in India, for an undisclosed amount.

Mint on 22 October first reported that SunEdison has backed out of a deal to buy Continuum Wind under pressure to reconsider recent deals after a series of big acquisitions worth over $6 billion, and as it looks to consolidate its business globally and cut costs. (bit.ly/1jCMlNP)

“We are terminating the Continuum acquisition transaction that we had signed several months back," Gopalan said on Tuesday, speaking over the phone from Chennai.

Continuum Wind, a company focused on wind energy generation, owns and operates 412.5 megawatt (MW) of wind energy projects and is controlled by Morgan Stanley Infrastructure (MSI), an infrastructure-focused private equity fund.

SunEdison has also likely walked away from its planned joint venture with Adani Enterprises Ltd for setting up of a $4 billion solar photovoltaic manufacturing facility in Mundra, Gujarat, two people in the know of the matter said. Gopalan declined to comment on this.

“We will slow down our inorganic focus... In the process, we will choose, if there are certain transactions that we have signed and we do not want to continue, if the contract allows us to do that (discontinue) we will exercise that because it allows me to preserve liquidity for my own organic activity," he said.

Gopalan said SunEdison’s balance sheet did not provide for enough capital for the 3.5-3.7 GW global capacity addition planned for 2016, which would need upward of $5 billion investment. India, where the company is present for the last six years and which now contributes about 20-25% of SunEdison’s global business, will see capacity addition of 2 GW over the next 18-24 months, Gopalan said. The company operates about 450 MW capacity in India currently.

Earlier this month, SunEdison’s aggressive bid for the tender of 500 MW capacity offered under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission in Andhra Pradesh saw India’s solar power tariff touch a record-low of 4.63 per kWh (kilowatt-hour).

The company had debt of $11.7 billion and cash and equivalents of $2.39 billion as on 30 September.

In October, SunEdison said it would cut 15% of its 7,260-strong global workforce. Within days, it also terminated a $700 million deal to buy renewable energy firm Latin American Power, which operates assets in Chile and Peru. The global job cuts would impact about 5% of employees in India, Gopalan said.

“We continue to be extremely enthusiastic about India as one of our most attractive sustainable markets," Gopalan said. “We want to focus our business in more sustainable large markets. India has definitely become one of the geographies we will continue to focus and strengthen... India becomes a country of even greater importance than before."

Gopalan said the company continues to look at selling assets and having dialogues with pension and sovereign wealth funds to launch its warehouse model in India. Globally, the company has partnerships with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, among others, for warehouse investment vehicles, which acquire operating assets.

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Published: 25 Nov 2015, 01:17 AM IST
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