RENEW POWER LIKELY TO EXPLORE INDIA LISTING: CEO

NEW DELHI: Renew Power Ventures Pvt. Ltd may explore an India listing, chairman and managing director Sumant Sinha said in an interview.

The development comes in the backdrop of the Goldman Sachs-backed clean energy company announcing a merger with Nasdaq-listed special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) RMG Acquisition Corp. II (RMG II) on Wednesday, at an enterprise value of around $8 billion. The new entity, Renew Energy Global Plc, will be listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol ‘RNW’, at an equity value of $4.4 billion. In response to a query on considering an India listing plan, Sinha said: “We definitely might.”

The public markets are awaiting a series of initial public offerings this year at a time when the Indian stock market has been hitting lifetime highs on expectations of a strong post-covid economic revival. Renew Power had shelved its IPO plan in 2019 because of market volatility.

“There is no requirement for us to list in India, but I think as an Indian company, we may very well consider doing that at some point in the near future. But we have to obviously look at concurrent listing requirements in India, and then weigh the pros and cons of it and then take a call. So, I can’t say that we will be doing it, but we will certainly examine it.”

Renew Power operates 5.73 gigawatts (GW) of solar and wind power, while 4.41GW is under various stages of development across India. In 2018, it had acquired 1.1GW of wind and solar power assets from Ostro Energy—one of the biggest acquisitions in the Indian renewable energy space.

According to Bank of America, the financial adviser to RMG II, this is the “first-ever DE-SPAC globally involving renewable IPP” and the “first DE-SPAC Indian transaction since 2016”. SPACS are publicly traded shell companies with no commercial operations, which help unlisted companies go public through mergers, skipping the conventional IPO route. DE-SPAC is the process when a SPAC stops being a shell firm. The $1.2 billion equity proceeds from the merger include a private investment in public equity (PIPE) deal of $855 million, which involves private placements of the common stocks in Renew Power and $345 million in cash held by RMG II.