SP New Energy Corp. (SPNEC) is looking to break ground on its 4 gigawatts (GW) solar power harvesting facility in Nueva Ecija within the year.
Leandro Leviste, SPNEC chief executive officer, said the company is also working to keep a controlling stake in all of its solar power ventures.
Leviste said SPNEC’s Nueva Ecija project will be the world’s largest solar power plant once completed. It will span 3,000 hectares of land where the company will put up its harvesting facility, and will take up the bulk of the proceeds of the company’s fund raising activities, including the P2 billion infusion of Metro Pacific Investments Corp. (MPIC).
SPNEC listed in the Philippine Stock Exchange in late 2021, raising P2.7 billion through an initial public offering. Last year, it issued P2.7 billion of shares anew through a stock rights offer to existing shareholder.
This year, SPNEC sold a stake to MPIC for P2 billion with an option to increase its investment to 42.82 percent of the company for a potential P21.75 billion investment in exchange.
“We have ongoing discussions on shareholding arrangements in certain of our projects, to find solutions that will benefit all parties. Out of deference for these discussions and respect to our partners, we will not yet elaborate, other than to say that: We believe that it is in SPNEC’s interest to invest in projects where it has a controlling stake, and that SPNEC is best served by allocating its capital to projects where this is the case,” said Leviste, who is also the founder of SPNEC’s mother company Solar Philippines Power Project Holdings Inc.
SPNEC is close to completing the acquisition of the needed 3,000 hectare landbank for the project, Leviste said.
“With a total planned 4 GW of solar farm developments, the company’s combined developments in the Nueva Ecija area would surpass the capacity of India’s Bhadla Solar Farm, currently the world’s largest farm at over 2.2 GW; as well as surpass the capacity of the total grid-connected solar operating in the Philippines as of the end of 2022 at over 1.4 GW,” SPNEC said.
