Acme Solar Holdings Ltd on Friday announced it will raise $334 million through dollar-denominated green bonds. This comes in the backdrop of a flurry of green bonds by Indian clean energy developers with a growing global focus on environment, sustainability and governance (ESG) investing.
“12 projects of ACME Solar Holdings Private Limited (ACME) today agreed to a debt investment of approx. $334 million, which will be funded by US dollar- denominated green bonds that were successfully priced today,” Acme Solar said in its statement on Friday.
Acme Solar Holdings Ltd recently roped in Brookfield Renewable Partners for jointly setting up solar project in Rajasthan, as part of its playbook to sell equity stake in its projects. Also, Denmark’s state-owned fund IFU, United Nations Office for Project Services S3i, and Norway’s Scatec acquired stakes in separate solar projects of Acme Solar in Rajasthan.
“The bonds will be issued by an offshore company and proceeds of the bonds will be used for subscription of non-convertible debentures issued by ACME’s projects. The bonds will have a tenor of five years and a coupon rate of 4.7%. The issue was oversubscribed by over 3 times, which is a testimony of the strong business fundamentals of the underlying assets,” the statement said.
“We have always been supported well by our Indian lenders and we are very happy to receive encouraging support from international investors as well. This will broaden our source of capital,” Manoj K Upadhyay, founder and chairman, Acme Group said in the statement.
There is a growing investor interest in India’s solar generation and equipment manufacturing space.