Prospectus for Downing Renewables & Infrastructure Trust published
Downing LLP is pleased to announce the publication of the prospectus for the Downing Renewables & Infrastructure Trust (DORE). DORE's prospectus has been approved by the Financial Conduct Authority, in connection with its proposed admission to trading on the premium segment of the Official List of the Financial Conduct Authority and to trading on London Stock Exchange plc's Main Market (IPO). The Company expects to complete the Issue by mid-December.
Investment analyst and reporter, James Carthew wrote a piece titled “There’s room for Downing as we pursue yields and renewable goals” in CityWire Investment Trust Insider on the announcement that can be read in full here with a summary below:
“DORE is looking to raise £200m. To make it across the line, its fund managers will have to convince investors that they have the requisite experience and a decent track record. It is also increasingly important to have a pipeline of potential investments lined up – so that the company can hit the ground running and start to generate income as soon as possible.
Tom Williams is head of energy and infrastructure at Downing. He has over 20 years’ experience of private equity and debt investments. The team is extensive, with 27 investment and asset management personnel supported by around 90 operations staff. The Downing approach is to be quite hands on with their investments and handle a fair bit of work in-house that other managers would outsource to consultants. They have made around 100 investments over the past decade and have generated returns of about 9% a year on these.
DORE will invest in a range of renewable generation sectors: solar, wind, hydro and geothermal
Mixing solar, wind and hydro in the same portfolio reduces the risk that adverse weather affects overall generation. Geographic diversification can help in this regard too.
Its assets will be located within the UK, Ireland and the Nordic region. The latter helps with access to hydroelectric schemes, in Norway these account for 95% of the country’s power production. By contrast, in the UK hydro is about 1.8% of production and is fairly rare to see in the portfolios of the listed funds…The geothermal element of DORE’s portfolio would be in Iceland.
The objective is to deliver returns of between 6.5% and 9% a year on the portfolio once it is fully invested. The target is to pay a 5% yield on the issue price in the first full year after the initial public offer (IPO) proceeds have been deployed. The board then hopes to have a progressive dividend policy.
The portfolio may have some exposure to assets under construction, which can help boost returns but comes with some additional risk.
It has a pipeline of £50m of solar assets in the UK. These amount to around 96 MWp (peak production of the assets in megawatts) of operational UK solar projects, with a six-year track record on average. Thirteen of these (73MWp) are ground-mounted sites, while 28 (10 MWp) are commercial rooftop installations. The balance represents residential rooftop sites in Northern Ireland.
In addition, there are about £70m worth of ‘near-term’ opportunities in wind and hydro. Beyond that, the manager has identified a pipeline of assets worth £1.5bn. These deals are coming from relationships that Downing has established over many years. Williams also thinks that Downing’s experience of managing these assets can be leveraged to optimise the performance of the portfolio.
I am still a fan of the sector and wish DORE all the best with its launch. Funds that can offer a decent yield uncorrelated with equity markets are likely to be in demand for some time and, if we are to meet our emissions targets for CO2, the sums that need to be invested in renewable energy, energy storage and energy efficiency are vast.”
The information above refers to specific past performance of Downing and should not be considered a reliable indicator of future results.
DORE's dividend and return targets stated above are targets only and not profit forecasts. There can be no assurance that DORE will meet these targets, or that DORE will make any distributions at all and they should not be taken as an indication of DORE's expected future results.
For further information on DORE, please visit www.doretrust.com
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