Abengoa Divests Stake in Clean Energy Business

Spanish technology firm Abengoa has completed the sale of its 16.47% stake in Atlantica Yield, a standalone generation company, to Canadian utility Algonquin Power & Utilities Corp (APUC).

Abengoa said the US$345mn sale was completed, and funds received, on November 27. It was Atlantica's largest shareholder until this week and no longer has any stake. Abengoa over-expanded prior to Spain's economic collapse a decade ago, struggled under heavy debt thereafter, and in 2016 undertook a huge restructuring in which creditors wrote off much of the €8.9bn owned to them ($10.1bn at current rates).

Atlantica Yield owns a 300-MW gas-fired power and steam plant in Mexico opened in 2013 that supplies state-owned refiner Pemex; it also has 15 renewable power plants totalling 1.446 GW of installed capacity mainly in Spain, California and South Africa (solar) plus Uruguay (hydro), 1,099 miles of electric transmission lines in Peru and Chile, and two seawater desalination plants supplying water in northern Algeria. Its overall 22 assets have between 14 and 26 years of their contract lives remaining. Based near London, it was first established 2013 as a standalone part of Abengoa, having originally been called Abengoa Yield.

APUC CEO Ian Robertson said: "We are pleased to have completed this transaction as an element of our international expansion strategy. This incremental investment in Atlantica deepens our interest in an attractively-priced portfolio of high quality, international operating assets, one which is accretive to APUC's earnings."