Canadian Solar has announced that it has completed the sale of two operational projects totaling 61 MWp to Canadian Solar Infrastructure Fund (“CSIF”, TSE: 9284) for JPY 30.6 billion (approximately US$283 million).
To finance the acquisition of the 53 MWp Oita Hiji-machi and 8 MWp Miyagi Ogawara projects, CSIF recently completed an international public offering and raised over JPY 18 billion (US$166 million) on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Canadian Solar participated in this transaction and continues to own approximately 15% of CSIF. Additionally, CSIF issued over JPY 19 billion (US$175 million) of long-term debt to maintain its capital structure.
These transactions affirmed CSIF as one of the largest listed infrastructure funds in Japan with over JPY 80 billion (US$740 million) of operational solar assets under management.
Dr. Shawn Qu, Chairman and CEO of Canadian Solar said “I am pleased to report that we have surpassed $1 billion of asset sales in the Japanese solar market, helped by significant growth in the Canadian Solar Infrastructure Fund which Canadian Solar continues to sponsor both as the asset manager and the largest investor. Since CSIF’s listing in October 2017, it has grown over 2.5 times and now owns 25 solar power plants totaling 184 MWp across Japan. A few weeks ago, we also launched the Japan Green Infrastructure Fund to accelerate the development of new solar projects in the country. We are very excited about the growth opportunities in this market.”
“The greater scale and expanded capital base will help our solar fund platforms to pursue attractive investment opportunities. We see significant prospects to increase shareholders’ returns with similar capital partnership platforms where we have secured gigawatt-scale pipelines, particularly in Latin America and Europe,” he added.