Bluefield European Solar Fund To List On The Main Market Of The London Stock Exchange
Bluefield European Solar Fund Limited, a newly incorporated solar energy investment fund, focused on solar PV assets located in Eurozone countries, today announces its intention to raise a minimum of €200 million by way of a Placing and an Offer for Subscription of Ordinary Shares on the London Stock Exchange's Main Market for listed securities. The shares will be denominated in Euros and application will be made to the FCA for them to be admitted to the premium segment of the Official List.
Bluefield Partners LLP, who established the first of the UK's focused solar PV investment companies, will act as Investment Adviser and will be supervised by a highly distinguished independent Board of Directors, chaired by Sir Neville Simms, former Chairman of International Power PLC and former Deputy Chairman of GDF Suez Energy International.
The Company is a closed-ended investment company registered with the Guernsey Financial Services Commission under the Registered Collective Investment Scheme Rules 2015.
Investment objectives and highlights
"¢ Acquire and optimise solar PV assets located in Eurozone countries (excluding Greece), with an initial focus on the Italian and Spanish solar PV markets;
"¢ Seek to provide shareholders with an attractive return, principally in the form of regular income distributions with high levels of dividend cover;
"¢ Targeting [1] an Internal Rate of Return ("IRR"), net of all set-up costs and expenses, of 7-9 percent, with 6.0 Euro cents annualised dividend, based on a €1 issue price, for the first two years, growing thereafter at 2 percent per annum;
"¢ Seek to outperform this target IRR by the effective execution of active management strategies. By the successful implementation of asset optimisation, the Company will seek to enhance the IRR by 1 to 2 percent;
"¢ Subject to maintaining a prudent level of reserves, the Company expects to reinvest cash flows in order to preserve its capital value;
"¢ Adopt a defensive investment approach by reducing financial debt at the asset level after acquisition and target low levels of leverage across the portfolio;
"¢ The Company will be seeded with a target portfolio of 49MWp of diversified, fully operational, solar PV assets in Italy and Spain for an expected consideration of €157m. The balance of the net proceeds of the issue is expected to be committed to investment within 12 months;
"¢ The Company has secured commitments from certain funds and accounts under management by direct and indirect investment management subsidiaries of BlackRock, Inc. to subscribe for 10 percent of the IPO and from Newton Investment Management Ltd to subscribe for a minimum commitment of €20 million (such commitment not to exceed 10 percent of the IPO and being conditional on a minimum raise of €200 million), each as cornerstone investors; and
"¢ Goldman Sachs International is acting as Global Coordinator and Sponsor, and along with Numis Securities Limited and UBS Investment Bank as Joint Bookrunners in relation to the IPO.
Commenting on the announcement, James Armstrong, a managing partner of Bluefield Partners LLP, the Investment Adviser said:
"The fragmented nature of these markets is ideally suited to our solar investment and asset management expertise. We expect to be able to use our specialist knowledge to quickly and efficiently consolidate a large, high yielding asset base for our shareholders. We have a high conviction that by implementing our low leverage investment strategy we have found a market opportunity that offers highly attractive valuations, defensive cashflows, dividend streams and, at c.€80 billion of operational assets, real scalability."
Sir Neville Simms, the Non-Executive Chairman of the Company, said:
"My previous experience of the European energy markets confirms the Investment Adviser's central investment thesis that there is the opportunity to create above average, long term returns in these attractively priced markets if approached in a defensive way. The deep solar experience of the Investment Adviser's specialist team and market leading track record combined with the scale of the opportunity provides the foundation to build a market leading solar focused energy company in the coming years."
