ERG has signed an agreement with EDP Renewables Italia Holding Srl for the acquisition of a 172MW onshore wind farm portfolio in Italy.
The seven projects are located in Basilicata, Campania and Calabria and were obtained after ERG purchased the entire share capital of seven undisclosed companies.
The wind farms all benefit from a 20-year Contracts for Difference pricing scheme with GSE from their commissioning date, which occurred between 2018 and the end of 2021.
The transaction fee in terms of enterprise value is of around €420m and during the first semester of 2022, the portfolio registered an EBITDA of around €36m, ERG said.
The closing of the transaction, subject to the approval of the Italian Antitrust Authority, will be perfectioned by the third quarter of 2022, ERG said.
According to the agreement one minority stake in one of the undisclosed companies will be directly acquired by a third-party investor, it added.
For the transaction, UniCredit acted as financial adviser, Legance as legal adviser, Deloitte as accounting and tax and Fichtner as technical adviser.
ERG chief executive Paolo Merli said: “Through this acquisition, which is consistent with the Group’s growth strategy, ERG further consolidates its leadership position in the Italian wind market, increasing its Country’s total installed capacity to around 1.3 GW.
“The high-quality plants, very recently commissioned, benefit from long-term purchase agreements, in line with our approach to secure the revenues.
“Lastly, the wind farms are located close to other ERG’s plants with the chance to develop significant industrial synergies.”