INTERNATIONAL - INDIA'S largest renewable energy firm ReNew Power said yesterday that it would go public through an $8 billion (about R116bn) merger with a blank-cheque firm in the biggest deal in the country's fastgrowing clean energy sector.
The deal will be financed with cash proceeds of $1.2bn, including $855 million in investments from serial blank-cheque deal-maker Chamath Palihapitiya, funds managed by BlackRock and Sylebra Capital.
Founded in 2011, ReNew Power counts Goldman Sachs and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) among its prominent investors. It owns and operates solar energy projects for more than 150 commercial and industrial customers across India.
It is among a wave of clean-energy firms poised to benefit from the country's push into renewable energy. India, the world's third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, wants to raise its renewable energy capacity to 500 gigawatts (GW), or 40 percent of total capacity, by 2030.
ReNew Power's total operational clean energy capacity is more than 5GW and it has an aggregate capacity of about 10GW. It also counts Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Global Environment Fund and Jera – a consortium of two of the biggest Japanese utilities – as investors. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are serving as financial advisers to ReNew, with Morgan Stanley also acting as a joint placement agent to the blank-cheque company RMG Acquisition Corporation II on the private investment in public equity (Pipe) deal.
RMG Acquisition's shares jumped about 14 percent in New York before the start of regular trading. The combined entity is expected to be listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol RNW. SPACs such as RMG raise money, through an initial public offering to merge with a privately held company that then becomes publicly traded.
Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive, also led the Pipe round at SoftBank-backed robotics firm Berkshire Grey, which earlier yesterday agreed to go public through a merger.
REUTERS