CREIT.COM.PH

CITICORE RENEWABLE Energy Corp. (CREC) is targeting to go public next year, its top official said, as he highlighted the company’s goal of rolling out a gigawatt of solar projects annually for the next five years.

“We are already preparing the necessary registration statement,” CREC President and Chief Executive Officer Oliver Y. Tan said about the status of the planned initial public offering (IPO).

“The idea is to file the registration statement within the year and if the market conditions are conducive, hopefully, we can do it, do the IPO by next year,” he said in an interview with ANC on Monday.

Last week, CREC said it had signed a $100-million loan agreement with Pentagreen Capital Pte. Ltd., a debt financing firm jointly established by Singapore-based firms HSBC and Temasek Holdings Ltd.

“The funding to be provided by Pentagreen will be used to fund approximately six solar projects that we are currently building. These projects are located in Batangas, and some would be in the northern Luzon projects as well,” Mr. Tan said.

With the current installed capacity of 284 megawatts (MW), Mr. Tan said the company is planning to roll out a total of 1,000 MW of new solar projects that will come online before the end of 2024, bringing its total installed capacity to 1.3 GW.

“The target rollout is to do one gigawatt annually for the next five years. So, [for] the first gigawatt, we’re well on our way of executing them, and for the second gigawatt, we are already doing land consolidation and also preparing for the various plans to roll out the second gigawatt by next year,” Mr. Tan said.

He also said that the company is aiming to develop its renewable energy portfolio to expand its market reach and to help the government achieve its target.

“We intend to expand our market reach to be able to cater to night peak customers also and towards [becoming] a pure renewable energy,” he said.

“And we can only achieve that once we have a portfolio of solar, wind, hydro, and to be further complemented by the energy storage system,” he added.

In July, the energy company was awarded renewable energy projects with a total capacity of 916 MW through the green energy auction program of the Department of Energy. — Sheldeen Joy Talavera