The sale of the massive 3100MW Tahachapi wind farm project in California has delivered windfall gains to Allco Finance Group, and might well be seized upon by Babcock & Brown as an indication of the potential of its own extensive wind portfolio.
Allco invested just “tens of millions” into Tahachapi, which it acquired as a greenfield development two years ago.
Since then it has signed a 1600MW off-take agreement with Southern Edison, and it has sold what is now a “brownfield” development for $US325 million to a consortium comprising ArcLight Capital Partners and Terra-Gen Power.
Allco had about 50 expressions of interest in the sale, and around ten made the final bidding, which was handled by Allco head of infrastructure Nick Bain, its head of wind Steen Stavnsbo, and the US-based Marathon Capital.
The company’s Australian assets, which comprise 1,000MW of development projects, and its remaining European assets, an operating portfolio of 68MW, are expected to be finalised within the next three months.
Below is a snippet Twin Turbo Celcia placed on the BNB thread this afternoon. As everybody starts to realise the true value of BBW European assests this stock will be seriously rerated.
Allco placed its portfolio up for sale around the same time as B&B and its listed offshoot B&B Wind Partners hired Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan to seek expressions of interest for parts, or possibly all, of their European portfolio.
Those sales could reap prices of around $1 billion. But B&B knows that the real potential value lies in its massive development portfolio, which amounts to 2,300MW this year, and a total of 16,00MW due for completion over the next eight years.
As one analyst noted recently, EV multiples for wind power assets of $2.50m/MW implied an aggregate pipeline of $40 billion. B&B’s investment in this pipeline stands at just $1.2 billion. Indeed, it was not so long ago that some analysts were valuing the wind assets alone at double the current market price for B&B.
BBW Price at posting:
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