To reduce leverage, Eneva is looking for a partner for renewable assets

Eneva has just commissioned UBS BB to find a partner for its renewable assets platform – which includes an already operational solar park and Pipeline from three other projects.

Eneva acquired those assets last year, when it bought Focus Energia for R$920 million, taking the newly listed company off the stock exchange.

At the time, one of the parks was already under construction – Futura 1, located in the city of Juazeiro, north of Bahia – and Eneva had completed the works over the past few months, in Capital expenditures Total 3 billion Brazilian reals.

The other three projects are Futura II and III, as well as solar parks in Juazeiro, and Santo Expedito, a wind farm in Rio Grande do Norte.

When all the parks are ready, they will have a combined generation capacity of about 4 gigawatts, including capacity already operational, turning Futura into the largest solar park in the Americas.

But it is expected that the three parks that have not yet been built will require Capital expenditures nearly R$10 billion, and Eneva wants a partner to share the investment, CFO Marcelo Habibi told the Brazil Journal.

In addition, according to him, the sale of a stake in the renewed platform would raise funds for Eneva to lighten its balance sheet.

The company finished the first quarter with a leverage of 4.6 times the EBITDA of the past 12 months, and the goal is to reduce that leverage to less than 3 times. Eneva is really starting to deleverage a bit: in the fourth quarter, leverage was 4.8x.

The company is already talking to potential interested parties – between funds and players Strategy – and is in the process of signing non-disclosure agreements to disclose operation numbers.

“We are open to any form. We can be a minority, a majority, or share control half and half,” said the CFO.

If you don’t find a partner, Habiba said the company’s idea is to develop this Pipeline of renewables more in the medium/long term, since it has some priority thermal projects.

Peter Arbex