Image: Bluefield Solar Income Fund.
Bluefield Solar Income Fund (BSIF) is looking to raise £45 million through a share placing to repay its drawn revolving credit facility, opening up its acquisition options.
The company and its group saw its total outstanding debt increase to £328.2 million, including £44.1m drawn on a revolving credit facility following its recent acquisition of a 64.2MWp UK-based portfolio of 15 plants.
Bluefield acquired the plants for an initial cash consideration of £106.6 million, along with a deferred consideration of up to £2.1 million depending on securing asset life extensions.
Currently this revolving credit facility figure represents 43.1% of gross asset value, which is in line with BSIF’s long term leverage of 40-50%.
But this means any future material acquisitions would require the company to finance acquisitions directly or reduce debt if it wishes to ensure it does not exceed its leverage.
As such, to both deliver value and return accretive acquisition opportunities BSIF has announced a proposed placing of new ordinary shares at a price of 124p per share.
The maximum number of shares available and their placing is open to the discretion of BSIF and Numis Securities, which is acting as placing agent for BSIF, but there will be a maximum of 36,500,000, representing approximately 9.9% of the current issued share capital.
The placing opens today (16 November 2020) and will close on 19 November, ahead of results being announced on 20 November and admission of placing shares on 24 November.
BSIF is continuing to evaluate a significant number of acquisition opportunities, including both subsidised portfolios and a small number of ready to build subsidy free assets.
Solar sector veteran Jonathan Selwyn and newly appointed managing director of Bluefield Renewable Developments Limited spoke to Solar Power Portal recently about the group's intent to develop subsidy free projects in the UK.