Foresight Solar Fund Limited has reached financial close on a £160m long-term debt facility. This facility will wholly refinance their £150m short-term acquisition facility currently in place.
The long-term facility will be provided by Macquarie Infrastructure Debt Investment Solutions (“MIDIS”) and Abbey National Treasury Services (“Santander”) as follows:
Tranche Amount Tenor Coupon/Margin
Fixed-rate tranche £63m 18 years 378bps
Inflation-linked tranche £63m 18 years 108bps
Term Loan tranche £34m 8 years 170bps
The Term Loan tranche is priced over the London Interbank Offered Rate (“LIBOR”) and will benefit from an interest rate swap. The expected average interest cost of debt at financial close is 2.59%.
Following financial close, the Foresight Solar’s total outstanding long term debt is approximately 36% of Gross Asset Value, if measured against assets as at 31 December 2015.
In addition, the company has entered into a new, short-term revolving acquisition facility with Santander at favourable terms – £40m for three years at LIBOR +205bps. The short-term facility will provide the company with the flexibility to take advantage of future pipeline opportunities.
Foresight Solar has also finalised an agreement with a single provider to enter into a 5-year Power Purchase Agreement for 15 of the 16 assets in the portfolio following a wide portfolio tender process.
It is intended that an advisory fee will be paid to Foresight Group CI Limited at financial close. Due to the complex
nature of the refinancing, the Board instructed Foresight Group CI to undertake the transaction given their past project finance experience, most notably the issue of a listed index-linked solar bond to refinance an existing UK solar portfolio in 2013.
FSFL : Foresight Solar secures long term finance