Renew Power raises $400 million via dollar bonds

ReNew Power has raised USD 400 million from global debt investors, making it the second issue from the country after Reliance Industries' mop-up of USD 4 billion. The renewable energy firm said the money was raised by the Mauritius-based Clean Energy Holdings, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Renew Energy Global Plc that is the parent of the operating firm ReNew Power.

It offered a coupon of 4.5 percent to the USD 400-million 5.25-year senior secured dollar notes. The money will be used to refinance existing high-cost debt and fund capital expenditure, among other uses, the Gurugram-headquartered and Nasdaq-listed company said.

The dollar notes are certified green bonds by the Climate Bond Initiative and will be listed on the Singapore Stock Exchange. These green bonds have a tenor of 5.25 years and are the first high-yield issuance out of the ASEAN and South Asian regions in the new year. The issue was subscribed 40 percent each by American and Asian investors and the balance by EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa)-based investors and most of the subscribers are long-only fund managers and pension funds.

So far, ReNew Power has raised in excess of USD 3.5 billion from eight issuances, of which, seven are outstanding, it said. ReNew Power President (Corporate Finance) Kailash Vaswani said the money will be used to refinance existing high-cost debt and fund capital expenditure of its subsidiaries and for other corporate purposes.

The company is among the largest independent renewable energy producers developing, building, owning and operating utility-scale wind and solar energy projects, hydro projects and distributed solar energy projects. As of November 2021, its total capacity stood at 10.3 gigawatts (GW) across, including commissioned and committed projects.

On January 6, Reliance had raised USD 4 billion in foreign currency bonds issue, which is the largest from the country so far to retire existing debt. The issue was "nearly three times oversubscribed with a peak order book aggregating around USD 11.5 billion", the oil-to-retail giant said.

It added that this was the largest-ever foreign currency bond transaction from the country, eclipsing ONGC Videsh's USD 2.2-billion US dollar bonds issue in 2014. Reliance has a cash balance of Rs 2.59 lakh crore and a gross debt of Rs 2.55 lakh crore as of September 2021.