Foresight Solar (FSFL) fund manager Ross Driver is to leave Foresight Group at the end of the year as the £394m renewables fund grapples with a 37% share price discount and government proposals to cut incentive payments to clean energy generators.
The company said Driver, who joined Foresight in 2021 after seven years at InfraRed Capital Partners, was off to pursue other opportunities. That could indicate frustration with the problems in the renewable funds sector and the difficulty in raising money when share prices trade well below net asset values.
FSFL said the rest of the fund management team of Toby Virno, David Goodwin and Matheus Fierro would stay, led by portfolio director Julian Elsworth. A process to recruit a senior replacement is underway.
Chair Tony Roper said: “We would like to thank Ross for his contributions to Foresight Solar over the last four years and wish him the best in his future endeavours.”
“Ross Driver has long been the face of Foresight Solar and we’re sorry to see him go,” said James Carthew, head of investment company research at QuotedData.
Shares in FSFL rose 0.4p, or 0.6%, to 70.6p this morning having dropped 8.5%, or 6.5p, last week in response to the government’s plans to change the inflation measure used in renewable obligation certificate (ROC) and feed-in tariff (FIT) incentives.
The company has not estimated the impact of these but analysts at Investec believe the first proposal to switch from the higher retail prices index (RPI) to the more accurate consumer prices index (CPI) would knock 2.1% from FSFL’s net asset value (NAV). A more radical option to claw back past over-payments under RPI could cut 6.8% off NAV, Investec said.
In September, FSFL said it was considering early offers for its Australian portoflio and if it agreed to sell them whether to return some of the money to shareholders. Annual results in July revealed the company had pulled out of merger talks in May but did not say why. In June, nearly 87% of voting shareholders supported FSFL’s continuation. Launched 12 years ago at 100p, the shares peaked at 125p in August 2022 before the sector derated in response to rising finance costs as interest rates and competition from government bonds as their yields spiked.
