TransAlta spins off renewable assets and plans to sell stake
CalEnergy Unit 5, Imperial Valley/ California (source: landmark-ca.com)
Alexander Richter
28 Jun 2013
TransAlta Corp. will spinn off its renewable energy assets into a new company, which will be called TransAlta Renewables Inc. and plans to sell a stake of 15 to 20 percent in an IPO.
Reported on Wednesday from Calgary, Canada, TransAlta Corp. has announced it will spinn off renewable energy assets into a new company, which will be called TransAlta Renewables Inc.
It then plans to sell off a 15 to 20 percent stake in a combined package of its renewable energy assets, hoping to raise $200 to $250 million. TransAlta plans to continue hold the rest of the shares.
This sounds very similar to a similar effort by Italian utility Enel that spin-off its renewable business in 2008 and subsequently did an intial public offering for the Enel Green Power back in 2011 raising EUR2.6 billion.
The company has now filed a preliminary prospectus qualifying the initial public offering of shares to the public, so the Calgary Herald. Today, the renewables portfolio of TransAlta represent 25 percent of TransAlta’s asset, so President and Chief Executive Dawn Farrell.
“The utility company said it will transfer 1,112 net megawatts of highly contracted wind and hydro power generation assets to the new entity upon completion of the offering.” Of that are 164 MW geothermal assets in California of CalEnergy, a company jointly owned by MidAmerica Holdings of Warren Buffet and Transalta.
TransAlta, as parent company will provide all management, administrative and operational services required for TransAlta Renewables.
The offering is expected to close in August.
Source: Calgary Herald
