Azure Power Global Ltd had a disappointing debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and saw its share price slip almost 19% after pricing its issue below the initial projection of $21-23 a share. Mauritius-incorporated Azure Power is the holding company for assets housed under Azure Power India Pvt. Ltd.
The poor show spells bad news for other large renewable energy firms in the country looking at a public listing in the short-medium term.
Azure Power that counts the private investment arm of the World Bank, IFC besides VC firms Helion Venture Partners and Foundation Capital as investors saw its share price end at $14.60 each on Wednesday. The firm had earlier priced the shares at the public issue at $18 apiece.
The overall issue was worth $61.3 million of which $40.3 million went to the company and the rest to the selling shareholders. IFC, German development finance institution DEG and French development finance institution Proparco partially exited the renewable energy company in the IPO. They got around $6 million each from selling a part of their individual holding.
The poor show gives Azure Power a market cap of $345 million against close to $500 million that it was pushing for in the IPO.
This includes a concurrent private placement worth $75 million to Canadian fund manager CDPQ Infrastructures Asia Pte Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.
CDPQ has picked a little over 4 million shares in Azure that gives it around 17% stake in the firm, making it the second-largest shareholder behind IFC.
Azure
Co-founded by Inderpreet Singh Wadhwa and Harkanwal Singh Wadhwa, Azure reported revenues of $38.9 million with operating profit of $15.9 million and net loss of $24.5 million for the year ended 31 March 2016. The company is now valued at 21.7 times its FY2015-16 operating profit.
The firm that claims to have developed India’s first utility scale solar project in 2009 operated 24 utility scale projects and several commercial rooftop projects with a combined rated capacity of 357MW as of 31 July 2016.
As per its prospectus, it is also constructing 12 projects with a combined rated capacity of 390MW and has an additional 258MW committed, taking total portfolio capacity to 1,005MW. The company is targeting 520MW operating capacity by 31 December 2016. Its long-term goal is to achieve 5GW committed or operating capacity by 31 December 2020.
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