Mainstream banks help Abengoa Yield up credit facility to US$290 million

Major names including Bank of America, Citigroup, Barclays and UBS have aided Abengoa Yield to more than double its credit facility from US$125 million to US$290 million.

Abengoa Yield, the yieldco established by Spanish sustainability and renewable energy company Abengoa, announced yesterday that it has increased its credit facility using a Tranche B revolver arrangement.

In the past few weeks, regular readers of PV Tech would have noticed the increasingly prominent role yieldcos are playing in solar financing, with SunEdison’s TerraForm yieldco on a seemingly never-ending path of acquisitions. Just this week SunEdison and TerraForm said they would buy one of North America’s biggest installers, Vivint Solar, for US$2.2 billion, following the previous week, when it emerged that TerraForm is also likely to be the first yieldco to invest in energy storage.

A report on Q2 funding activity in the solar industry from Mercom Capital Group showed public market financing of solar was up US$1 billion quarter on quarter, driven largely by activity in the yieldco segment. Abengoa Yield saw its first quarter profits this year double from the same period of 2014 and acquired a further 450MW of assets from Abengoa in May.

Abengoa Yield contains renewable energy assets alongside conventional power generation, electric transmission and water contracts, although the vast majority of its interests are solar plants, six out of eight of which are in Abengoa’s home country.

The latest funding round saw Bank of America act as joint bookrunner and global coordinator, bank HSBC acted as joint bookrunner and agent, while the other joint bookrunners were UBS, RBC, Barclays, Citigroup and Banco Santander. Abengoa Yield said the funds raised will be used to “finance future acquisitions and for general corporate purposes”.

Last week, Abengoa reduced its stake in the yieldco to 49.05%, selling 2,000,000 shares. This appears to contradict reports in May in which the company reportedly said it would not reduce its share of Abengoa Yield beyond 51%.