Ratch earmarks Bt12bn for power plants overseas in 2012
Ratchaburi Electricity Gen-erating Holding has budgeted Bt12 billion to expand overseas power-plant projects next year in the expectation that it will clinch two of three deals under negotiation.
“The source of funds is not such a big deal, as we have cash flow of as much as Bt7 billion to Bt8 billion or thereabouts,” president Noppol Milinthanggoon said yesterday.
The company is considering debentures and bank loans. It has room to issue debentures worth up to Bt7.5 billion, as its debt-to-equity ratio is only 0.5, well under its self-imposed limit of 1.
Ratch in the afternoon signed a primary agreement on a joint venture to build a coal-fired power plant and natural-gas power plant with a combined capacity of 1 gigawatt in the Dawei industrial estate in Burma. This is not included in the three planned projects.
Ratch expects to end the year with total capacity of 5.1GW and plans to increase that to 6.6GW by 2016. However, that target will most likely be exceeded because the company’s alternative-energy plant projects have already met the target of 100 megawatts this year, ahead of 2016 as planned.
“The company is ready to invest more in alternative energy if it gets the opportunity,” Noppol said.
Because of the flooding, seven of Ratch’s eight solar-farm projects with combined capacity of 34.25MW, which are joint ventures with Solarta, might not start operating until next year instead of this year as had been scheduled.
For the 103.5MW wind-farm project in Nakhon Ratchasima, in which Ratch holds 20 per cent, the company has inked a financial deal and expects to start commercial operations in 2013. The 9.9MW Songkhla biomass project, in which Ratch holds 40 per cent, is expected to start operating in 2014.
Both revenue and net profit tend to look better this year than last year. The company saw a 1.77-per-cent increase in net profit to Bt4.32 billion for the first nine months.
However, Ratch yesterday reported a decline in consolidated net profit to Bt1.23 billion in the third quarter from Bt1.26 billion in the same quarter a year before.
“We’ll have to keep a close watch on electricity consumption, whether it falls during the flooding,” Noppol said.
