Mytrah restarts bid to sell stake

MYTRAH ENERGY HAS A DIVERSE 2.3 GW ENERGY PORTFOLIO

Green energy producer Mytrah Energy India Pvt. Ltd has restarted the process to sell a majority stake, two people aware of the development said, after a $750-million deal with global private equity firm KKR fell through.

The Hyderabad-based company will soon hire an investment bank to find a buyer, the people cited above said on condition of anonymity. The sale process was run last time by Standard Chartered Bank.

The transaction will be among the largest in India’s clean energy space, given that Mytrah has one of the largest wind data banks? in the country. It has an operational portfolio of 2.3 gigawatts (GW)—including 1,700MW of wind and around 535MW of solar—apart from 700MW of projects under development.

Vikram Kailas, co-founder and managing director of Mytrah Energy, declined to comment. A KKR spokesperson in an emailed response said, “We aren’t able to comment on market speculation.” Queries emailed to a Standard Chartered Bank spokesperson on October 20 remained unanswered.

India now has 34.6 GW of solar power and 38GW of wind power capacity and aims to produce 100 GW from solar projects and 60GW from wind power plants by March 2022. The country is running what will become the world’s largest clean energy programme, targeting 175 GW of clean energy capacity by 2022.

“Mytrah Energy is open to both — asset sales or a majority stake in the firm,” said one of the two people cited above.

In 2010, Mytrah raised $80 million from institutional investors on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange but delisted later. At one point, it was working on a domestic listing.

India’s wind energy generation during this year’ peak season was the worst ever due to low wind speeds on account of the erratic summer monsoon, Mint reported earlier. Due to climate change, rainfall patterns are changing, along with the changes in the wind sector, leading to variability in wind speeds. India’ wind power generation has been down around 40% during the peak wind season that begins in June and ends in September and has impacted companies having major wind power portfolios.