In the UK, deal-making for development portfolios has slowed somewhat while the grid connection queue undergoes a substantial reform. One panellist said this was a temporary blip.
“I don’t think the slowdown in M&A in the UK says anything about the asset class,” said Ariane Brunel, investment director at investment services and financing firm Triple Point. She had already discussed key industry themes and challenges in a Q&A with Energy-Storage.news in the lead-up to the event, which you can read here.
A delegate in the audience then asked a question around operational project M&A versus development portfolios.
“There haven’t been that many operational asset sales, so people don’t quite know what to look at,” said Heather Offord, investment director at Australia-headquartered owner-operator Eku Energy. “It’s often newer players looking for that kind of deal, as they don’t want risks like construction risk.”
Eku, part of infrastructure firm Macquarie, has established a large presence in the Australian market, as well as smaller footholds in the UK and New Zealand.
Nadiya Vargola, head of BESS business development at power firm Alpiq, similarly said that there weren’t enough operational assets in Continental Europe for a track record in operational M&A. The firm deploys its own BESS projects, including one recently commissioned in Finland and one acquired in-development in France. But it also provides tolls to other operators, including a recent one in Germany with owner-operator Eco Stor.
“We have a diverse enough portfolio to be comfortable taking on all the merchant risk,” she added, in response to a question around tolls and revenue contracts and whether they need to be in place for a project sale.
Panellists agreed that bigger projects made sense for M&A, particularly around ready-to-build (RTB) stage. “Big projects, big problems, small projects, big problems,” Taggart said.