Acciona shareholders give green light to IPO of renewables unit

• Spanish power company Acciona has safeguarded shareholder approval for an initial public offering (IPO) of its renewables department, providing a boost for the firm's plans to reach 6GW of set up PV by 2025.

Shareholders today (12 April) authorised the business's board of directors to accomplish the floatation procedure for a minimum of 25% of Acciona Energía "whenever it considers appropriate". The intent of the board is to keep a risk of around 70% of the unit after the transaction.

Acciona announced in February its ambition to drift its power division on the stock exchange to minimize its funding prices and strengthen its balance sheet.

It is wished the IPO will certainly assist the business raise its installed power ability from around 10.7 GW to 20GW by 2025. In terms of set up solar PV, ability is anticipated to rise from 1,236 MW as of December 2020 to approximately 6GW by 2025.

With present market patterns pointing to a solid need for sustainable infrastructure as well as clean energy, the power unit IPO "would certainly provide us the opportunity to increase our growth with the ideal expense of resources as well as a better annual report structure", said Acciona CEO José Manuel Entrecanales when the firm reported its 2020 financial cause February.

The company published a 10% year-on-year decline in profits to EUR6.47 billion (US$ 7.7 billion) in 2020, in part because of the impact of COVID-19 on electrical energy demand in Spain. EBITDA was down 21.8% to EUR1.12 billion, with a EUR221 million impact from the pandemic.

Last year, the business completed a 94MW solar PV project in Chile and began on what will be its 7th renewables project in the South American country, the 238MWp Malgarida facility. It has considering that announced plans for a joint endeavor with US hydrogen fuel cell maker Plug Power to create an environment-friendly hydrogen platform in Spain as well as Portugal.

Shareholder authorization for the IPO comes in the middle of a flurry of similar announcements by Spanish solar gamers in recent months. Both independent power manufacturer Opdenergy as well as renewables designer Ecoener disclosed prepare for their very own IPOs last week, while tracker producer Soltec detailed on the Spanish Stock Market in October.