Iberdrola has put on hold for now the attempted sale of a minority stake in a roughly 1-gigawatt Spanish solar energy portfolio, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The Spanish company decided to explore the sale last year, seeking a valuation of around $1 billion for the whole portfolio known as Project Julieta, one of the sources said.
Yet the size of the valuation complicated talks, one of the people said, while the other pointed to waning interest from one unnamed bidder seen until recently as the frontrunner.
Iberdrola said it doesn’t comment on what it called market speculation.
Spain’s solar power capacity has increased rapidly in recent years, while electricity demand hasn’t kept pace, hitting the prices that producers get for their output and the value of their generating assets.
For Iberdrola, asset rotation and partnerships – which include the disposal of non-core or mature assets and the sale of minority stakes – have been key elements of its strategy over recent years.
The company uses proceeds from such deals to help fund new investments in core businesses, increasingly power grids. It set a target to raise 13.2 billion euros through 2028, 58% of which would come from partnerships and the rest from asset rotation. Three quarters of this has already been achieved.
It has partnered with the likes of Japan’s Kansai Electric Power, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and Abu Dhabi’s state-owned renewable energy company Masdar.
Source: Reuters.com