Bluefield Solar has completed a refinancing as part of its management of the 359MW portfolio of solar PV assets it jointly owns with GLIL Infrastructure.

The refinancing was completed in January 2025 with a consortium of lenders and replaces about £214m of existing inflation-linked debt on the solar PV portfolio, with about £297m of fixed-rate debt at an all-in rate of 5.8%. This results in the all-in cost of debt across the company increasing modestly to about 3.8% (up from 3.4% in September 2024). The new debt matures in December 2035, in line with the subsidy period of the assets.

The portfolio, which is jointly owned by Bluefield Solar and GLIL (the trust owns just over 25% and GLIL owns the balance), comprises 69 solar PV projects, 183MW of which is backed by Feed in Tariff (FiT) subsidies, 128MW by Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) and 48MW on a merchant basis.

The transaction raises about £21m for Bluefield Solar Income and, taken together with the successful sale of 112MW of solar capacity as part of the strategic partnership with GLIL which completed in September 2024, results in about £89m of recycled capital being returned to the company since the commencement of its partnership with GLIL in January 2024.

To date, £50.5m of this has been used to repay a portion of the RCF, £10.6m used for the share buyback programme, £6.2m invested into the construction of Mauxhall and the development pipeline, and about £1.5m used for capital expenditure on the operating portfolio.

This leaves a balance of about £40m (including carried forward reserves of £20.3m from FY2024) available for further debt reduction, supporting the development pipeline or enabling future share buyback programmes following completion of the original £20m allocation made to buy backs in January 2025.

Phase Three of the strategic partnership with GLIL, which involves the prospective sale by Bluefield Solar of a limited portion of its ready-to-build pipeline, is currently in progress.

Following the re-financing, the company’s total debt outstanding is £588m, of which the RCF balance stands at £133.5m. That equates to 44% of Gross Asset Value, based on the NAV as at September 2024.

The interim results will be released on Thursday 27 February.

[Bluefield’s discount is currently over 31%, which is entirely unjustified but will probably mean that some shareholders would like the company to prioritise buybacks. At this share price, the yield is well over 10%.]

BSIF : Bluefield Solar completes £300m refinancing