Thailand: B Grimm Power delays listing plan over change in accounting

Thailand: B Grimm Power delays listing plan over change in accounting

B GRIMM POWER will postpone to next year its plan to list on the stock
market because of a change in accounting standards, said company president
Preeyanart Soontornwata. She said the new standards affected B Grimm Power's
plan for an initial public offering as it operates as a holding company for
dozens of subsidiaries.

The company will soon formally appoint its financial adviser. It had earlier
planned to list in the second quarter of this year or by the end of 2016.

B Grimm Power, a flagship company of the trading and manufacturing concern B
Grimm Group, expects to invest around Bt59 billion to grow its generating
capacity by 46.5 per cent - from 1,626 megawatts at present to 2,383MW - in
five years.

Preeyanart said B Grimm Power, which currently earns most of its income from
small power producer (SPP) plants in Thailand, has started to expand to
renewable-power projects. Its current solar farms have total capacity of
114.2MW, and its overseas projects are mainly hydropower ventures in Laos.

Nevertheless, the company believes that SPPs, which bank on customers in
industrial estates under the so-called distributed-generation concept, still
have good prospects, since it continues to be approached by
industrial-estate developers interested in a stable power supply for their
customers.

She said the government's recent decision to cap the SPPs' power sales to
the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand at no more than 30 per cent
would not affect B Grimm Power, since electricity demand from its customers
exceeds the new requirements.

B Grimm Power typically has five-year contracts with its industrial
customers.

Preeyanart said B Grimm Power foresaw its growth as "unlimited" considering
the opportunities in Thailand and abroad, including Laos, where it has a
very strong local partner.

"We're considering many more projects in Laos," she said. It has also been
eyeing Myanmar, Indonesia and Malaysia and recently started to explore
opportunities in Cambodia.

"But each project must meet our risk criteria. We're a real developer, not a
speculator," she said.

B Grimm Power did not take part in the recent tenders for solar farms and
biomass plants in Thailand for that reason, she added.

The company expects revenue from overseas projects to grow from nearly zero
at present to 20 per cent of total income within five years, while the
contribution from renewable power increases from 7 per cent to 24 per cent
during the same period.

In the first half of 2016, B Grimm Power's revenue totalled Bt13.4 billion,
up 21 per cent from the same period last year, while net profit reached
Bt1.84 billion, soaring 150 per cent, mainly from the commencement of four
power plants (B1P1, ABP4, BIP2 and ABP5) in Thailand.

Three main reasons

Better-than-expected results in the first half were for three main reasons:
efficiency improvements in fuel management, lower maintenance expenditures,
and the fact that demand for power in automotive and electronic industries
had not reduced as much as initially expected, she said.

Preeyanart said B Grimm Power was studying a plan to invest in a rooftop
solar project in the Philippines, while it recently decided to cancel its
plan to acquire Medco Power in Indonesia after re-evaluating the risk
factors.

In Thailand, the company has acquired land to develop the 16MW Bo Thong
wind-farm project in Mukdahan province, slated to commence operating in
2020. Tractebel, an engineering consultancy, has been contracted to study
technological choices for the wind-energy project.

She said the company's recently announced target to achieve capacity of
5,000MW in five years was a tentative goal that included projects that were
only in the memorandum-of-understanding stage. The figure for all the
committed projects is 2,383MW.

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John Diecker
APT Consulting Group Co., Ltd.

www.aptthailand.com