ACEN raising funds to build more solar, wind facilities

The power generation arm of Ayala Corp. is raising as much as P30 billion in fresh funding this year partly to build more renewable energy (RE) facilities in the country.

Eric T. Francia, the president of AC Energy Corp. (ACEN), said in a media briefing that the amount will be used to develop more wind and solar renewables this year in a bid to accelerate its goal of becoming the largest listed renewables platform in Southeast Asia.

“I would expect that between the capital raising—the SRO private placement and the FOO—that’s a significant amount of cash that we will be raising that could reach maybe up to P30 billion of cash infusion this year,” he said, referring to the company’s stock rights offering and its follow-on offering initiatives.

The company raised more than P5.37 billion from its SRO on Friday, amounting to 2.27 billion shares sold at P2.37 apiece.

Francia noted that his group will be using the proceeds of its capital-raising activities to expand its renewables footprint, which is currently at “close to 500MW.”

“We plan to add another 500 MW. Hopefully we can hit 1,000 MW of renewables in the Philippines alone. This will be funded through all these capital raise that we are doing. Now that close to P30 billion of capital raise will be able to fund much more than 500 MW of renewables. This is going to represent advanced funding for our projects,” he said.

Francia said the projects for this year would be for solar and wind farms.  “We haven’t finalized all the contracts yet, but a good estimate of that I think, 1/3 of that will be wind farm and 2/3 would be solar,” he said.

Francia added that his group is also pursuing RE projects in Australia, India, and Vietnam.

“We’ve set out a RE target of 5 gigawatt [GW] by 2025. Given that trajectory, we hope to exceed 5GW, as we expect to be in the 2.5GW mark between the Philippines and international platform this year,” he said.

ACEN plans to be the largest listed renewables platform in Southeast Asia by 2025, and is now in the early stages of planning for the five years beyond that period.

“We will most likely set our sights already for 2030, but we’re still calibrating the right level of RE,” he said. “All this is in line with our aspiration to be the largest RE platform in Southeast Asia.”