Ultor, a 50:50 joint venture between Enel Green Power and Fondo Italiano per le Infrastrutture (F2i), has signed an agreement to buy the 60MW Italian solar portfolio of Etrion.
Ultor will purchase a total of 17 operating solar power facilities for an initial cash consideration of €78m and the assumption of €221m of project-related debt.
Potential additional cash earn-out payments of up to €24m have also been agreed.
Etrion subsidiary Etrion S.p.A holds a 53.4MW set of assets while another subsidiary Helios Ita runs a 6.7MW set. This comes to 60MW across 17 project sites.
The solar assets produced about 102.4GWh of electricity in 2015. They have a book-value of €17.5m in Etrion’s balance sheet as of September this year.
With the sale agreement, Etrion expects to gain at least €53m at closing of the transaction, excluding the earn-outs.
The deal is expected to be closed either by December 2016, or January 2017 and is dependent on the capability of both the parties in closing the purchase and sale of the assets at different times.
Etrion will use the sale proceeds in financing its new solar projects in Japan and also to repay a portion of outstanding corporate bonds.
Etrion CEO Marco Northland said: “Etrion started as a private solar developer focused on Ital y and quickly became one of the largest solar power producers in the country through internal development and several acquisitions. Since entering Italy in 2009, we have collected over €47m in cash distributions from these projects.
“We have executed across the full project lifecycle – most recently optimizing production, reducing operating costs and extracting value through refinancing.
“The sale of the Italian assets demonstrates our ability to monetize solar assets at multiples of our original investment. The sale proceeds will allow us to accelerate our growth in Japan while, at the same time, deleveraging the company through repaying part of our corporate bond.”