Pampa Energia, fresh off of its acquisition of Petrobras Argentina, is in talks with export credit agencies and multilaterals to diversify its funding sources, the company’s CFO says.
The Argentine energy company seeks to raise approximately $450m to finance expansion plans in four projects, Gabriel Cohen told LatinFinance in Buenos Aires.
“We are having different discussions with various sources of funding,” he said. “We want to be ready to take advantage of opportunities in the debt markets, but strategically, we want to do a transaction with an ECA and are also in talks with multilaterals.”
The company is developing three thermal projects at 100 MW each and a 100 MW wind farm.
For the thermal projects, Cohen said these will be funded at the corporate level, while the wind farm may be structured under a 10-year or 15-year project financing. Pampa is in talks with different multilaterals for the wind farm funding, Cohen added.
Pampa signed a 12-month $600m bridge facility in July to help pay for the 67% stake in Petrobras Argentina and a mandatory tender offer for the remaining outstanding shares.
Another part of the acquisition process involved Petrobras Argentina selling a $500m 7.375% 2023 non-call four 144A/Reg S bond in July. Proceeds were used to buy back maturing 2017 notes that had a guarantee from its Brazilian parent.
Brazilian state-owned energy company Petrobras agreed in May to sell its stake in its Argentine assets to Pampa for $892m. Citi was financial advisor to Pampa, while Evercore advised Petrobras. Linklaters was legal counsel to Pampa and Davis Polk advised the Brazilian company.
Pampa wraps tender offer
Pampa Energia also announced the results of a share tender offer and voluntary exchange with Petrobras Argentina’s common shareholders.
Once the exchange has settled the Argentine energy company will own 90.4% of Petrobras Argentina’s share capital. The tender offer is part of Pampa Energia’s overall acquisition of Petrobras Argentina.
Petrobras Argentina shareholders tendered approximately 311.67m common shares, while no Petrobras Argentina American Depository Shares participated in the compulsory acquisition offering, a statement from Pampa showed.
Shareholders that tendered their Petrobras Argentina shares received ARS10.37 ($0.67) per share or received Pampa shares at an exchange ratio of 0.5253 for every Petrobras Argentina share.
About 53.86m Petrobras Argentina shares were tendered in the voluntary exchange offer, while Pampa will issue 28.29m of its own shares to former Petrobras Argentina shareholders.
Roughly 21.38m Petrobras Argentina ADSs participated in the voluntary tender exchange and Pampa will issue 4.49m of its own ADSs, which equates to 112.34m new common shares.
SBS Trading coordinated the tender and exchange offer for Pampa.