Aboitiz Power Corp. on Tuesday signed an agreement with six foreign banks for a $650-million facility to partly finance the acquisition of indirect interests in two big coal plants in Bataan province.
Aboitiz Power signed the facility agreement with The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd., DBS Bank Ltd., The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, Maybank Kim Eng Securities Pte. Ltd., Mizuho Bank, Ltd. and Standard Chartered Bank.
“The proceeds of the loan will be used to partially finance Therma Power Inc.’s acquisition of indirect partnership interests held by funds managed by Blackstone in GNPower Mariveles and GNPower Dinginin,” it said.
Aboitiz Power, through subsidiary Therma Power Inc., announced Tuesday the proposed acquisition of indirect partnership interests held by funds managed by Blackstone in GNPower Mariveles Coal Plant Ltd. Co. and GNPower Dinginin Ltd. Co. for $1.2 billion.
Therma Power signed purchase and sale agreements for the acquisition of the partnership interests held by affiliated investment funds of The Blackstone Group L.P in World Power Holdings, L.P. and Sithe Global Power, L.P.
Aboitiz Power said the transaction would result in Therma Power ultimately acquiring a 66.1-percent beneficial ownership interest in GNPower Mariveles and a 40-percent beneficial ownership interest in GNPower Dinginin.
“The proposed acquisition of the indirect effective interests in GMCP and GNPD is in line with our target to increase our attributable net sellable capacity to 4,000 MW [megawatts] by 2020. We consider this acquisition very strategic as it gives us immediate earnings from the operating asset and incremental capacity in the coming years from the plant under construction and its expansion,” said Aboitiz Power chief executiveErramon Aboitiz.
Aboitiz Power said the proposed acquisition consideration was about $1.2 billion, subject to certain adjustments at closing, and would be funded by a combination of internally generated cash and financing from foreign banks.
Therma Power, a wholly owned subsidiary of Aboitiz Power, is the holding company of the Aboitiz Group’s investments in non-renewable energy.
GN Power Mariveles is a 604-MW subcritical coal-fired power plant, which started operations in 2014, while GNPower Diningin is a new project consisting of 2 by 668-MW supercritical coal-fired power plant, also located in Bataan. With Butch Gunio