AC Energy to complete fund raising with FOO

Published February 2, 2021, 5:30 AM by Myrna M. Velasco
https://mb.com.ph/2021/02/02/ac-energy-to-complete-fund-raising-with-foo/

Ayala-led AC Energy Corporation (ACEN) will be completing its series of P30 billion worth of equity-based fund raising activity by concretizing the third leg via a follow-on offering (FOO) this year.

In a briefing with reporters, AC Energy President and CEO Eric T. Francia noted that the P30 billion cash shoring up for the company had to come from proceeds of its recently concluded stock rights offering (SRO) which raised over P5.3 billion; then the private placement of Singaporean wealth fund GIC Private Ltd. that will bring in P12 billion; and the balance will come from the FOO which is targeted by the middle of this year.

“Between the SRO, private placement and FOO, that’s a significant amount of cash that we will be raising that could reach up to P30 billion of cash infusion this year,” he reiterated.

Francia qualified the proceeds raised will be funneled to projects intended for domestic renewables capacity doubling of the company this 2021 – climbing from a capacity portfolio of about 450 megawatts at present to around 1,000MW.

“So that (fund) is going to be available to us, and therefore, we do have plans of deploying these amounts focused on renewable projects…it includes the projects in our pipeline. We’ve announced already that this year, we expect to double basically our renewables in the Philippines,” he stressed.

The next step in the corporate restructuring being advanced for ACEN will be the infusion of its international assets – which is currently undergoing another round of valuation given the capacity expansion already accomplished by the company in recent months.

“We already announced the share swap of about P16.67 billion shares worth. That will need to be subjected to an updated third party valuation and that’s what we are going through right now,” he said.

FTI Consulting is carrying out the fresh round of third party valuation to underpin the shares infusion of international assets into ACEN – and that study is due for completion within this first quarter or prior to the conduct of the FOO.

“Over the last 12 months, both our Philippine platform as well as international platform had progressed, expanded significantly. Both of those expansions we have on both platforms would need to be taken into consideration by the third party valuer,” Francia explained.

The final decision on the international assets’ infusion, he emphasized, will be concluded within this quarter “so that when we do our follow-on offering, the prospective investors will have a firm idea already of what the terms are for the international infusion.”

For GIC’s capital injection into ACEN, the final phase will be for ACEN’s parent firm (AC Energy and Infrastructure Corporation or ACEIC) to be selling additional shares to the Singaporean firm so it can attain its targeted 17.5-percent ownership stake in the Ayala energy firm.

For the two-pronged investment arrangement of GIC in ACEN, the total amount it will be putting in as previously announced will be US$400 million or roughly P20 billion. Its additional shares purchase from ACEIC will be consummated toward the end of the year.