Swiss power producer Etrion is enjoying a busy year, with business activities taking place in various solar markets across the world. The most recent news coming out of the company is the planned sale of the 60 MW of solar projects that it currently owns in Italy.
The company has agreed to sell its 60 MW Italian portfolio, which is spread across 17 sites, for an itial fee of EUR 78 million, with potential additional cash earn-out payments of EUR 24 million, and the assumption of EUR 221 million of project-level debt.
It has agreed to make the sale to Ultor S.p.A., which is a joint venture by Enel Green Power and Fondo Italiano per le Infrastrutture looking to expand its presence in the Italian solar market. All going well, the two parties are expected to complete the transactions between December 2016 and January 2017.
Looking for a positive outcome from the sales, Etrion has said that it plans to use the additional funds to further develop its solar activities in Japan, which has huge market potential. It has also said that it will used part of the funds to repay a portion of its outstanding corporate bonds.
“We are pleased to sign a share purchase agreement with Ultor for the sale of our 60 MW Italian solar portfolio,” said Etrion’s CEO Marco A. Northland. “Since entering Italy in 2009, we have collected over Euro 47 million in cash distributions from these projects. We have executed across the full project lifecycle – most recently optimizing production, reducing operating costs and extracting value through refinancing. The sale of the Italian assets demonstrates our ability to monetize solar assets at multiples of our original investment.”
The sale comes at a good time for the company, after it released promising third quarter financial results last week, which showed yearly increases in revenues and EBITDA. These financials represent a sequential trend for Etrion, who has been growing throughout the year. However, not everything is plain-sailing for the company, after a one-time impairment expense on a Chilean solar project saw Etrion record a net loss of USD 88.3 million for the quarter.
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