San Buenaventura Power bags award for P42-B financing deal

MANILA, Philippines - San Buenaventura Power Ltd. has been cited by Thomson Reuters for a landmark fund raising that ended up as the country’s biggest project finance transaction in peso terms.

Last Feb. 3, the company bagged the “Asia-Pacific Power Deal of the Year” from Reuters’ Project Finance International (PFI) for its P42.15-billion all-peso fund raising transaction last year.

It was the biggest transaction of such kind to date.

The company is a joint venture between Manila Electric Co. Power Gen Corp. and Thailand’s Electricity Generating Public Co. Ltd. It was among the 40 companies which made it to PFI’s Roll of Honour.

It is currently building a 500-megawatt (gross) supercritical coal-fired power plant in Mauban in Quezon province, the first in the country to use state-of-the art supercritical technology.

Compared to subcritical power plants, supercritical coal-fired power plants operate at higher pressures leading to higher efficiencies and significant reductions in emissions over the expected life of the plant.

In Oct. 8, 2015, San Buenaventura Power signed a project financing agreement for the project. It made its first drawdown in Dec. 1 that year.

The transaction has a tenor of 15 years, the longest maturity that Philippine banks can provide.

The project finance was put together by a consortium of Philippine financial institutions, which usually requires support from foreign banks or multilateral export credit agencies in other similar deals. 

The lenders are composed of BDO Unibank Inc., China Banking Corp., Metropolitan Bank & Trust Co., Philippine National Bank, and Rizal Commercial Banking Corp.

BDO Unibank-Trust and Investments Group served as the loan facility agent while Metrobank-Trust Banking Group acted as collateral trustee. 

Meanwhile, BDO Capital & Investment Corp. and First Metro Investment Corp. were appointed as joint bookrunners and joint issue coordinators.

On the other hand, Chinabank, PNB Capital and Investment Corp. and RCBC Capital Corp. acted as joint lead arrangers for the transaction. 

San Buenaventura Power expects the plant to start providing baseload power supply by the first half of 2019.