November 28, 2024 | 12:00am
MANILA, Philippines — Ayala-led ACEN Corp. is further strengthening its footprint in Vietnam with the acquisition of a significant interest in renewable energy (RE) firm BIM Energy Holding Corp. for $70.5 million.
ACEN told the Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday that its affiliate ACEN Vietnam Investments Pte. Ltd. signed a share purchase agreement with Huntington Renewable Investments Ltd. to buy out 49 percent of BIM Energy.
BIM Energy is a subsidiary of the BIM Group, a Vietnamese conglomerate that also has investments in real estate development, agriculture and food, and consumer services.
ACEN expects this multimillion-dollar investment to expand its pipeline of projects in Vietnam as part of efforts to be a leading renewables platform in Southeast Asia.
The strategic deal is also set to bolster the operation and growth of ACEN’s existing projects in Vietnam, including the 405-megawatt Ninh Thuan Solar and the 88-MW Ninh Thuan Wind farms.
In 2019, ACEN and the BIM Group inaugurated the Ninh Thuan Solar development, ACEN’s first greenfield project in Vietnam, said to be one of the largest of its kind in the region.
Spanning over 300 hectares of land, the solar farm delivers around 600 million kilowatt hours (kWh) of renewable power to Vietnam’s national grid per year.
The Ninh Thuan Wind project, meanwhile, is the second joint project between ACEN and the BIM Group that started commercial operations in 2021.
The $155-million wind farm generates around 327 million kWh of clean power, enough to light up about 50,000 homes and avoid close to 300,000 tons of carbon emissions annually.
At present, ACEN’s portfolio in Vietnam includes seven RE assets with a combined capacity of about 1,106 MW.
In the Philippines, the company currently has approximately 1,850 MW of attributable renewables capacity.
As the listed energy platform of the Ayala Group, ACEN aims to expand its attributable RE capacity to 20 gigawatts (GW) over the next six years.
From January to September, ACEN saw its net income heat up by 24 percent to P8.14 billion from the same period last year’s P6.6 billion.
The growth was driven by the robust attributable renewable output, which climbed by 31 percent year-on-year to 4,127 GW hours.
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