2016-02-02 05:07:20.202 GMT By Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) -- About seven months ago, a unit of Shenzhen Energy Group Co. started looking for ways to find new sources of capital for solar plants that wouldn’t compete for cash with its parent company’s hydro and coal projects. The answer was a new kind of security and a first for China.
A unit of the company called Shenneng Nanjing Energy Holding Co. raised 1 billion yuan ($152 million) last month by selling the nation’s first securities backed by solar farms. It required the parent company to become a guarantor of the securities and executives to persuade banks and insurancecompanies that “cash flows generated by solar farms in the long run can help repay,” said the unit’s managing director Li Zhong.
The comments shed light on the inventive ways companies in renewable energy are choosing to raise money at a time when stock markets worldwide and particularly in China are wobbling, shutting off traditional equity investments.
The funding Shenneng Nanjing obtained is linked to solar farms with about 200 megawatts in capacity and equivalent to 55 percent of total investments it’s making in the technology, Li said in an interview in Zhengzhou city in China’s central province of Henan.
China’s push to boost clean energy has made it the world’s biggest market for solar power and home to most of the biggest photovoltaic panel makers. It’s also spurred developers including China Longyuan Power Group Corp. and GCL New Energy Holdings Ltd. to build their own solar farms, requiring access to capital to execute deals.
Applying the asset backed securities, or ABS, to more solar projects would help the industry overcome one of its biggest challenges to tap capital as some of the companies in the industry file for bankruptcy, including Suntech Power Holdings Co. and LDK Solar Co.
Shenzhen Energy’s deal is important because it “laid out a pathway to a bigger ABS market backed by renewable energy assets,” said Nick Duan, an analyst for Bloomberg New Energy Finance in Beijing.
China last year issued 593 billion yuan of ABS products, up 79 percent from a year earlier, according to the China Central Depository & Clearing Co.
Shenneng Nanjing will pay interest of about 3.6 percent to 4.5 percent annually for the securities, which have various maturities of as much as five years, underwriter BOC International (China) Ltd. said on its official WeChat social media account. The highest interest rate applied to the solar ABS is below the central bank’s benchmark rate of 4.75 percent for borrowings of as much as five years.
Others may follow if they can maintain the confidence of their creditors, Li said.
“An ABS takes about three to six months to issue, which is still a bit more time consuming than securing financing from banks, and its costs need to be determined case by case,” said Xue Jiancong, director of public relations at China Merchants New Energy Group Ltd. Even so, the securities can be a tool to refinance existing debt, he said.
One problem is it’s difficult to predict cash flows from solar farms in China, since developers are suffering delays in subsidy payments and the grid is having trouble absorbing electricity generated from some plants, said Duan at BNEF.
Shenneng Nanjing’s products were designed to cope with subsidy delays by keeping repayments lower earlier in the term and then raising them as time passes, Li said.
The company currently focuses on projects in regions of Jiangsu, Anhui, Shandong and Henan and plans to develop new projects in Jiangxi, Hunan and Hubei in the future. These regions are suffering fewer grid constraints.
Shenneng Nanjing is operating about 100 megawatts of wind farms and 400 megawatts of solar-power projects. It plans to raise its renewable energy capacity by about 50 percent this year, he said.
大约七个月前，深圳能源集团有限公司的一家子公司开始寻找新的途径来争取太阳能电站的建设资本，以避免它与母公司的水电和煤电项目进行现金资本的竞争，最终的答案是一种有价证券，而且成为了中国的首次尝试。
深能南京能源控股有限公司在上个月将持有的光伏电站资产转换为在金融市场上可以自由买卖的证券募集了10亿人民币（15200万美元），它的母公司（深圳能源）成为该项目的担保人，使得银行和保险公司相信“太阳能发电产生的长期的现金流可以帮助偿还”，该公司的总经理李忠先生说。
这些观点揭示了可再生能源公司在全球尤其是中国股票市场在不稳定时关闭了传统的股权投资的背景下筹集资金的创造性途径。
中国努力推动清洁能源使其成为世界上的最大的太阳能市场和最大的光伏组件制造商市场。这也刺激了研发者包括中国龙源电力公司和协鑫新能源控股有限公司建立自己的太阳能发电站，这就需要进入资本市场来进行交易。
以更多的太阳能项目申请资产支持证券或光伏电站资产证券化将帮助该行业克服其最大的一个挑战—资本的提供。特别是目前行业内包括尚德电力、赛维太阳能在内的很多公司破产的情况下。
深圳能源的这次交易是非常重要的，因为它“奠定了去往一个更大的可再生能源支持的资产证券化市场的途径的基础”，北京彭博新能源金融的分析师尼克段说。
中国去年发布了5930亿元的资产证券化产品，79%的产品是在近一年内发行的，。
如果他们可以对他们的债权人保持信心的话，其他人会跟随着进行投资，李忠先生说。
“一个资产证券的项目需要大约三到六个月的时间来发行，这比从银行贷款花费更多的时间，其成本要根据不同的情况而确定，” 薛健聪说，他是在招商新能源公司的公关总监。即使如此，证券可以是再融资现有的债务的一个工具，他表示。
深能南京公司的产品可用来应对补贴延期的问题，在早期保持较低的还款率并随着时间的推移逐渐提高。
该公司目前重点发展的项目区域为江苏、安徽、山东、河南，同时计划在湖北、湖南和江西开发新的项目。这些地区有良好的电网条件，发电量不会受到电网的约束。