Solar electricity and storage investor Foresight Solar Fund advanced 14.4% in net asset value in 2022’s opening six months, it announced today.
The nine-year old site-picker’s portfolio increased to 51 UK-based solar farms or batteries, together valued on a net, unaudited basis at £754.9 million. A battery purchase project at Clayfords, Aberdeenshire sealed outside the half in late July completes British assets at 52 sites. Ground-mounted arrays in Spain and Australia complement Foresight’s global portfolio.
At home, electricity generated was 8.0% above base case, with UK irradiance 8.9% above budget, the company told shareholders. That helped push generation worldwide to 2.8% above plan.
Greater stability in the fund’s income streams has come from signing new fixed priced agreements for UK assets for periods of up to four years’ duration. Chairman Alex Ohlsson, pictured, hailed major PPAs signed with off-takers.
Consolidated revenues and EBITDA were respectively 18% and 26% ahead of budget for the half year, driven by strong power prices.
Sparking up its 99MW Lorca portfolio to full operation provided the half’s big highlight from Spain.
Foresight’s global portfolio generated clean electricity nominally to power 189,600 homes in the half, a gross rise of 11.8 per cent, avoiding 424,477 tonnes of carbon emissions.
The fund’s total annualised return to shareholders since its IPO rose to 7.7%, up from 5.5% in mid-2021.
Ohlsson hailed the success of Foresight’s diversification strategy. Shareholders’ approval secured to allocate up to 5% of the fund’s gross wealth into development stage solar and battery storage assets, represented an exciting channel of growth.
“We are already well progressed in evaluating several development pipelines in both the UK and Europe”, the chairman observed.
By late afternoon, Foresight’s share price had advanced 2.65% on the regular LSE market.
