Acwa Power targets 2016 IPO on Kingdom’s bourse

CAPE TOWN: Saudi Arabia-based power and water project developer, Acwa Power, is aiming for a stock market floatation on the Saudi bourse sometime next year, its chief executive said.
The company, which has $27 billion worth of assets, with another $17 billion under construction, is involved in renewable energy projects across Africa and was bullish on its growth.
“We are committed to broadening the shareholder base, including to bring in the Saudi public and in due course international participants,” Paddy Padmanathan, president and CEO said on the sidelines of a gas conference in Cape Town.
“We are working toward an IPO listing program, very much subject to regulatory constraints and approval processes. We look forward to getting this done as soon as possible and a realistic time frame has got to be sometime in 2016,” he said.
Padmanathan said they have not yet decided where a secondary listing for the company would be.
With another $15 billion worth of projects set for construction in the future, Padmanathan said the firm would use regional hubs based in Rabat, Cairo and Johannesburg to expand across the continent.
Each region would eventually contribute around 5,000 to 6,000 MW of renewable energy within the next five years.
“By 2030 I expect to see 40 percent of African electricity being supplied by renewables,” he said.
African countries, including South Africa, the continent’s most advanced economy, are struggling to meet power demand and are increasingly turning to green energy sources including hydro, solar and wind projects to overcome constraints.