INTERVIEW - India's Punj Lloyd Looking To Make Wind Turbines
Date: 08-Aug-07
Country: INDIA
Author: Hiral Vora
The firm has been mainly building natural gas pipelines, offshore platforms, storage tanks and refinery units.
"Renewables as an area has been right up our alley... it is a good space to watch by putting one's binoculars on," Punj told Reuters in a telephone interview.
"We may seek a partner for manufacturing (wind turbines) ... it will probably be a foreign player," he said.
Shares in Punj, valued at $1.8 billion, hit an all-time high of 296.50 rupees in early trade and ended at 289.25 rupees, up 4.2 percent in a Mumbai market that rose 0.2 percent.
The company will raise $200 million by Friday through an equity placement with institutions, Punj said, adding the proceeds would be used to buy a stake in a shipyard and for a new realty joint venture.
Last week Punj Lloyd said it would buy a 25.1 percent stake in Pipapav Shipyard Ltd. in western India, and separately invest up to $45 million in a joint venture with Ramprastha Group, a local real estate group.
Punj said the equity placement would reduce his personal holding in the company to 35.5 percent from 38 percent. The Punj family holds a total of 53.4 percent in the company.
Citibank and Kotak are advisors for the placement.
The company, which gets more than half its revenue from outside India, has identified two countries in the American continent and aimed to start operations there in the next 12 months, the chairman said.
Punj, which has about $4 billion orders on hand, is also eyeing contracts from the Middle East, where it has been building gas pipelines and processing plants.
"There is a lot of money being deployed back into their economies," Punj said, adding the company's acquisition of Singapore-based SembCorp Engineers & Constructors in 2006 had raised its chances of getting more orders from the Gulf region.
