ACWA Power considering IPO ‘sooner rather than later’: report

Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power is mulling an initial public offering “sooner rather than later” in order to meet growing requirements for cash, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, citing company chief executive Paddy Padmanathan.

“An IPO is an option we will definitely utilize,” Padmanathan said. “We want to bring the public into this business. We have a very capital hungry company.”

The chief executive, however, declined to give a date for the floatation.

ACWA Power, the Kingdom’s largest independent power plant developer, needs an estimated $800 million annually in cash, in order to help fund the development of power generation projects worth $6 billion to $8 billion a year, Padmanathan said.

Additional funds could come from partners buying equity stakes in projects, or from additional debt and a revolving credit line ACWA Power had.

The Riyadh-based company, which sold $814 million of bonds in 2017, sees an IPO as a way to “add a new currency” to its efforts to finance the business, Padmanathan said.

He added that a public offering will also help boost the transparency of the developer, which operates about 37 plants across eight nations, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Jordan.