RattanIndia Power registers record Rs 104 cr profit on back of dues payment

Bottom line surges over 3x year-on-year; company claims 'complete resurrection of business' two years after debt recast

RattanIndia Power Ltd (RPL) which concluded the debt restructuring of its Amravati thermal power plant in 2019, has registered a record high profit, which the company said is due to higher earnings from dues payment and sale of power.

RPL posted a net profit of Rs 104.44 crore during the third quarter of FY2021-22 (Q3FY22), as against net profit of Rs 33.44 crore during the corresponding period of FY21. The company’s EBITDA stood at Rs 298.72 crore during Q3 of the current fiscal.

Speaking with Business Standard, Vibhav Agarwal, managing director, RPL said, the company has started recovering regulatory assets which were stuck mostly due to the legal tussles.

“We have claims of about Rs 4,000 crore as regulatory assets due to be recovered from MSEDCL. Out of this, the major portion is the reimbursement for the excess cost of the coal we procured between 2015-18 when we weren’t getting FSA coal. In November, the MERC ruled in our favour and we are soon going to recover Rs 1,157 crore as the final claim for the realisation of the old dues pertaining to the additional coal cost,” Agarwal said.

He further said two years after the debt recasting, there has been “A complete resurrection of business. “Our current secured external term debt stands at Rs 1,953 crore as against our net worth of Rs 5,139 crore. We are generating EBITDA of about Rs 1,000 crore every year.
 

In 2019, Rattan India’s Amravati power project (1,350 Mw) concluded its debt restructuring with new lenders coming on board. Goldman Sachs and Varde Partners took over Rs 4,050 crore of the total debt from existing lenders. This also included 15 per cent equity each in the project. The new lenders have used the Aditya Birla Asset Reconstruction Company platform for the deal.

The total debt exposure of the consortium of lenders was Rs 6,575 crore. This entailed a 38 per cent haircut by the consortium led by state-owned Power Finance Corporation. There were 12 lenders to the projects, including State Bank of India, Bank of India, Punjab National Bank and Axis Bank, among others.

The company in a public statement said, the Amravati plant is supplying its entire power to MSEDCL under 25-year term PPAs based on long-term coal linkage from South-Eastern Coalfields Limited for entire contracted capacity. RPL said the Amravati unit has achieved the Plant Load Factor (PLF) of 74 per cent and Plant Availability Factor (PAF) of 85 per cent upto Q3.

Agarwal said the tariff charged by the plant is in the range of Rs 3.77-3.8 per unit and it makes it to the merit order dispatch of the state.