Debt-saddled Chinese solar project developer Panda Green has waved through its latest bail-out from Beijing to keep the wolf from the door for another five months.
The Hong Kong-listed developer today announced a HK$1.79 billion (US$230 million) cash injection from the state-owned Beijing Energy Holdings Co Ltd, first trailed in August, had finally gone through after twice being postponed.
The state-owned entity will become the biggest shareholder in Panda Green, taking the proportion of its stock held by Beijing bodies to more than 74%.
The financial shot in the arm, which Beijing Energy paid in return for a 32% holding in the developer, will enable Panda Green to repay the near-US$12.5 million it borrowed eight days ago from one of its other state-owned investors, Huaqing Solar Power Ltd. Huaqing, which acquired a stake in Panda Green in January 2019 after the developer was unable to settle a US$123 million loan from the public business, will hold a diminished 13.59% interest in Panda Green after new shares were issued to Beijing Energy.
Shuffling debt piles
With that short-term loan due for repayment on June 27, the Beijing Energy cash will also go a long way towards paying the near-US$280 million Panda Green must pay yet another of its state-owned investors – China Merchants New Energy Group Ltd – by July 23. By pv magazine’s back-of-a-beermat reckoning, the developer will now have to find another US$62.5 million by the time China Merchants is due a settlement.
China Merchants, which will hold a 15.47% interest in Panda Green after the Beijing Energy bail-out, subscribed to a US$260 million issue of 8% senior notes by Panda Green last month as the developer scrambled to pay an earlier US$242 million debt commitment with hours to spare. Under the terms of the, theoretically, two-year senior notes issued, Panda Green – which banked a net US$258 million from the fundraising exercise after handing over US$2.6 million to a China Merchants entity in fees – now has to repay 100.5% of the value of the notes, plus interest, by that July deadline.
The other state-owned Panda Green shareholder, China Huarong Overseas Investment Holdings Co Ltd will also see its stake diluted by today’s bail-out, to 13.59%.
The project developer claims to own 58 solar projects in China with a total generation capacity of 1,957 MW.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
1 comment
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.