Skip Capital, Stonepeak pursue Australia's Genex Power
Australia-listed renewable energy producer Genex Power has rejected an initial AUD 320m (USD 225m) buyout offer from Skip Capital and Stonepeak Partners, but it is open to further advances.
Skip, which currently owns about 20% of Genex, is a tech investor established by Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar that was active in the local utilities space as recently as May when it led a USD 14m round for specialist software supplier Neara. Stonepeak is a US-headquartered infrastructure investor with a base in Sydney.
Their consortium offered AUD 0.23 in cash per share of Genex, with Skip investing via a AUD 100m infrastructure fund it set up early last year. This was part of an expansion of the firm’s historically software-focused mandate to include “future aware” projects such as renewable power, recycling, and food and data infrastructure.
The Genex board said in a filing that the offer undervalued the company and therefore it would not allow the consortium to conduct further due diligence. However, it said it was "willing to engage constructively with the consortium" on a revised proposal.
The stock traded down marginally following the announcement, closing on AUD 0.21 on August 1. This gave the company a market capitalisation of AUD 284.3m.
Genex’s portfolio includes batteries, pumped storage hydro, wind and solar projects across Queensland and New South Wales. It claims to be the only pure-play renewables player on the Australian Securities Exchange and among the largest operators locally with more than 470 megawatts of production and storage capacity in development.
The company values its overall project portfolio at more than AUD 1bn, including 100 MW of operating solar projects and 300 MW of fully funded storage projects still under construction. It hopes to provide clean energy to more than 350,000 homes by 2025.
The flagship project is the Kidston Clean Energy Hub in northern Queensland. The plan is to integrate large-scale solar with pumped storage hydro and potentially wind energy. The complex comprises an operating 50 MW solar facility and a 250 MW pumped storage hydro project with the potential for further multi-stage wind and solar units.
Skip’s infrastructure and real assets program is led by Sebastian Tringali and Ashley Chen, who previously worked at Hastings Funds Management and Goldman Sachs, respectively.
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