IDFC’s 300-million-dollar acquisition

Seven projects, of 200 MW each, located in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, are to be acquired by IDFC from First Solar’s India portfolio for 300 million dollars. First Solar is an American photovoltaic (PV) manufacturer of solar panels and also provides utility-scale PV power plants based in Arizona. It provides services for support like finance, construction, maintenance and end-of-life panel recycling. It has supplied over 1gigawatt (GW) worth of panels in India itself. The current market capital is $5.1 billion. The first acquisition to be carried out by First Solar is owned by IDFC’s infrastructure fund called Vector Green, which in the past has acquired a 24 MW wind asset from Naveen Jindal’s Jindal Steel and Power in addition to a 40 MW solar project from Punj Lloyd.

IDFC’s infrastructure has raised approx. 2 billion dollars across two of its funds- one in 2008-2009 while the other in 2014. With this, it became the only company to raise a second India dedicated follow-on infrastructure fund in the country. In the current fiscal year, 2017, India added 5,526MW of new solar capacity (up 83 per cent from the previous year) and 5,400MW of new wind capacity which is up 63 per cent (according to consultancy Bridge Io India).

IDFC Alternatives is India’s Leading Multi-Asset Class Investment Manager (from the company’s website).