Bluefield Solar confident on dividend despite power price falls

Bluefield Solar Income Fund has announced its interim results for the six months ended 31 December 2014. Over the period the fund expanded by £131m through a placing of new shares but the fund’s net asset value per share fell from 102.96p to 101.34p. They paid an interim dividend of 3.25p during the period and say they are on track to pay 7p for the full year. the total return on net assets then works out at 3.5% and the return to shareholders was 5.8%.

They made 17 acquisitions during the period, adding 50MWp at a cost of £51.5m. They say they have a pipeline of potential acquisitions that could take their total generating capacity to 250MWp.The Board feel the company would benefit from being more highly leveraged and have asked the investment adviser to explore ways of achieving this.

Power prices fell during the period, which does have some knock-on effect on their revenue and net asset value. Nevertheless they say this will not impact their ability to meet their dividend targets. In terms of operations, one plant, Betingau, suffered a problem with its transformers and was out of action until earlier this month. The financial impact of this was covered by a retention on the purchase price and so there was no effect on the fund.

BSIF : Bluefield Solar confident on dividend despite power price falls