Panda Green showcases its full portfolio

Chinese solar project developer Panda Green, which is racing to find the cash to settle US$242 million of senior notes due in eight days’ time, today published a roll call of its generation assets.

The heavily indebted developer has been hit by a double whammy this week. On Wednesday, the company revealed its attempt to persuade the holders of US$350 million of 8.25% senior notes due to mature on January 25 to hold off payment had won over the holders of only US$108 million of the debt.

That was followed yesterday by the news the completion date for the company’s latest, HK$1.79 billion (US$230 million) bail-out by a Chinese state-owned entity had subsequently been rolled back to February 18.

A sales pitch?

The disappointing response to its attempted debt restructuring prompted Hong Kong-listed Panda Green to state it would look to loans or bonds to make up the shortfall, despite its already daunting debt pile.

The company today vaunted the fact its 58-plant, 1,957 MW project portfolio – all based in a Chinese market yet to recover from solar subsidy reforms introduced last year – generated 631 GWh of clean power in the final three months of last year, and 3.17 TWh during the full-year.

However, the accompanying breakdown of the 54 projects it owns – plus four assets owned by “associates” – somewhat undermined the sales pitch, with the generation portfolio in 12 of the 18 provinces listed producing less power from October to December than in the final quarter of 2018.

Output falls

Panda Green and its associates have 500 MW of generation capacity in Inner Mongolia and 200 MW in each of Qinghai and Ningxia, with the latter a single facility. The company has 150 MW across two projects in Shanxi, 120.2 MW in Xinjiang, 120 MW in Hunan and operates 100 MW projects in each of Ningxia, Hubei and Anhui. The rest of its portfolio ranges from 95 MW of capacity across six sites in Tibet to three projects with a total capacity of 2.8 MW in Guangdong.

Fourth-quarter output dropped dramatically in four provinces, year-on-year, with the Shanxi projects producing 84 GWh of clean power in the final three months of 2018 but only 59 GWh in the same period a year later. The figure for the 60 MW spread across two projects held by associates in Inner Mongolia fell from 42 GWh to 20.8 GWh and Panda Green’s three-project, 37.3 MW of assets in Hebei saw productivity fall from 12 GWh to 9.5 GWh. The 3 MW facility operated by the company in Zhejiang saw output almost halve, from 1.1 GWh to 625 MWh.