Centrosolar fails to get quorum for creditors' meeting

Share

Insolvency-hit Munich solar company Centrosolar yesterday announced a setback in its plans to continue to operate solely through its U.S. business Centrosolar America.

The company announced a plan, on February 27, to continue with a slimmed down Centrosolar Group holding company and the U.S. business with the possible addition of its Renusol mounting systems business if a purchasor cannot be found for that unit.

But plans to start the ball rolling on that reorganization hit the buffers today when Centrosolar revealed the necessary quorum of creditors had not registered in time for a planned creditors' meeting today.

As part of the reorganization, creditors were to be asked today to back a plan to swap a portion of the monies owed them for shares in the successor company with any monies raised by a sale of Renusol also being used to meet obligations.

Centrosolar today announced that although 99.8% of those creditors who did register for the meeting indicated their willingness to back the proposal, the holders of only around 37% of the bond in question had signed up for the event, falling short of the 50% required to validate a decision.

Centrosolar will now try again with a second meeting – with a lower quorum of holders of 25% of the bond capital – arranged for April 14, ahead of a May creditors' meeting which would be required to approve the restructuring under German insolvency laws.

Grim annual figures

The mishap came as Centrosolar reported grim unaudited figures for 2013 – the year which saw its main Centrosolar AG, Hamburg unit and its own subsidiary Centrosolar Sonnenstromfabrik GmbH file for insolvency, on October 18.

The Centrosolar Group AG parent company says the costs of the insolvencies account for some €7.2 million (US$10 million) of write-downs on bank loans and €3.5 million to €4 million of inventory hits within an overall estimated earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) loss of €12 million to €12.5 million for the year for the surviving units of the company, down from a €2 million loss in 2012.

Overall, the company expects to post an EBITDA loss of €23 million to €28 million for the year, up from €19 million in 2012 with consolidated revenues falling from €186 million to €96 million.

The news the Centrosolar Group board anticipates a ‘balanced' set of results for 2014 after the cost of completing the insolvencies is stripped out may be given short shrift by investors ahead of the second attempt to win over creditors.

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.

Popular content

Trina Solar launches 760 W TOPCon module with 24.5% efficiency

06 December 2024 The Chinese manufacturer said its new i-TOPCon Ultra panel is part of the Vertex N family and is intended for applications in utility-scale projects...

Share

Leave a Reply

Please be mindful of our community standards.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.

Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.

You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.

Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.