Eneva has just mandated UBS BB to seek a partner for its renewable assets platform — which includes an already operational solar park and a pipeline of three other projects.
These assets were acquired by Eneva last year, when it bought Focus Energia for R$920 million, taking the newly listed company off the stock exchange.
At the time, one of the parks was already under construction — Futura I, located in the city of Juazeiro, in the north of Bahia — and Eneva completed the works over the last few months, in a capex total of BRL 3 billion.
The other three projects are Futura II and III, also solar parks in Juazeiro, and Santo Expedito, a wind farm in Rio Grande do Norte.
When all the parks are ready, they will have a combined generation capacity of around 4 GW, including the already operational one, transforming Futura into the largest solar complex in the Americas.
But the three parks yet to be built are expected to require a capex close to BRL 10 billion, and Eneva wants a partner to split the investment, CFO Marcelo Habibe told Brazil Journal.
In addition, according to him, the sale of a stake in the renewable platform would raise funds for Eneva to deleverage its balance sheet.
The company ended the first quarter with a leverage of 4.6x the EBITDA of the last twelve months, and the goal is to reduce this leverage to less than 3x. Eneva has already started to deleverage a little: in the fourth quarter, leverage was 4.8x.
The company is already talking to potential interested parties — between funds and players strategic — and is in the phase of signing NDAs to reveal the numbers of the operation.
“We are open to any format. We can be minority, majority or share control half and half,” said the CFO.
If you don’t find a partner, Habibe said that the company’s idea is to develop this pipeline of renewables more in the medium/long term, since it has some more priority thermal projects.
Peter Arbex