By Sethuraman N R
BENGALURU (Reuters) – India’s Apollo Green Energy, an engineering and construction firm, plans to set up a 500 megawatt (MW) solar module plant in the next two-three years and tap domestic public markets in 2025 to execute new projects, its chief executive said on Tuesday.
The company, which focuses on constructing renewable energy projects, currently has an order book of 35 billion rupees ($416 million), and is looking to expand so that it can triple the size to 100 billion rupees by the end of this financial year, CEO Sanjay Gupta told Reuters.
“We are actively following market trends and collaborating with financial consultants to determine a fair valuation (for the initial public offering),” Gupta said. The company plans to finalise the IPO size within the next three to four months, he added.
The fundraising plan come amid a boom in Indian IPOs and the government’s focus on clean energy as the country looks to add 500 gigawatt of renewable energy by 2030, up from 154 GW currently.
India’s stock market scaled record highs until September this year. So far in 2024, 288 companies have raised $14 billion from domestic IPOs, eclipsing the $7.42 billion raised in all of 2023, per LSEG data.
Apollo Green Energy is also executing 400 MW of solar installations and other engineering, procurement and construction projects and is seeking to expand into building wind, green hydrogen and battery storage solutions, Gupta said.
The company has identified a site to set up a 500 MW solar module production facility in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh to supply components to its projects, with plans to increase the capacity, the CEO said without elaborating.
Apollo Green Energy’s revenue jumped about 71% year-on-year to 11.75 billion rupees in the fiscal year ended March 2024.
Its long-term debt is rated ‘BBB/Stable’ by Crisil.
($1 = 84.1130 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Sethuraman NR; Editing by Sonia Cheema)