India’s largest independent power generation company in the renewable energy sector — ReNew Power Limited — secured yet another round of debt funding from international investors as it continues to aggressively push to expand its project pipeline.
According to a press release, ReNew Power Limited managed to raise $375 million through placement of green bonds with international investors. The bond consists of two five-year non-call notes offered at a yield of 6.67% per annum. The bond offer has been rated as BB by FitchRatings. 
The company claimed the bond issue ‘received excellent response and were fully subscribed by leading fund managers/asset managers, banks and pension/life funds from across the US, Europe and Asia.’ The company, however, did not disclose names of the actual investors.
Proceeds from the bond issue shall be used to refinance outstanding debt and for investment in new projects. The company has a big pipeline of projects as it has been aggressively bidding in large-scale solar as well as wind energy projects. In fact, ReNew, along with Ostro Energy (which the former had acquired last year), has the largest share in wind energy projects awarded through auctions in India till date. Of the 11,057-megawatt capacity auctioned in India so far, ReNew Power and Ostro Energy have bagged a total of 1,775 megawatts.
ReNew has found huge success in getting overseas funding which has been comparatively cheaper than what the company can hope for from Indian lenders. In February, the company secured debt funding worth $350 million from the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the US Government’s development finance institution. OPIC had granted a loan of $250 million to ReNew in March 2016 as well.
The interest rate of 6.67% per annum that ReNew is going to pay the investors of its latest green bond is a highly attractive deal if one compares it with the cost of borrowing from Indian banks and lenders. The current prime lending rate of the Reserve Bank of India is 6.25%. Any banks and lenders would charge a huge markup on this rate before offering debt funding to Indian companies. The same was also mirrored in the statement issued by ReNew’s deputy Chief Financial Officer, Kailash Vaswani.
“The Bond issue was in line with our strategy of diversifying debt sources. The issuance enabled us to fix our interest rate risk and achieve a lower pricing than existing borrowing costs. The international bond investors have seen us deliver on committed performance and hence have come forward to invest in our new issuance.”
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