WHA UP confident ahead of SET debut

WHA Utilities and Power (WHA UP) is ready to enter trading on the Stock Exchange of Thailand on Monday (April 10), and chief executive Wiset Jungwattana is confident it will be welcomed by investors.
“WHA UP will start offering IPOs for the first time with 229.50 million shares in total, divided into 125 million additional shares and 104.50 million shares belonging to the original holding company, H-International (SG),” he said. The shares are priced at Bt26.25 apiece.
Capital earned will be used to expand business, with additional investment in utilities and electric plants. It will also be used to pay off loans, helping to reduce the current D/E of 1.5 times. The rest will be used for capital circulation.
“We will make further investments in the power sector, such as the IPP, SPP and VSPP plants that have been opened, totalling 350 megawatts [out of a total 540ME to be ready by January 2019],” he said. “In addition, the company is preparing for an alternative-energy power project, which consists of solar-power generation on the rooftops of warehouses and at rented factories within the WHA group. That’s a total of 2 million square metres.”
Also under development is an industrial-waste-management-for-energy project through Chon Buri Clean Energy (CCE), a joint venture among WHA, Glow Energy and Suez, holding 33.33 per cent each.
In February CCE signed a contract to supply electricity from industrial waste from its 8.63-megawatt plant, starting in the fourth quarter of 2019.