Update on Strategic Initiatives…Brookfield Infrastructure Partners
The economic cost of the
downturn will be that many industrial companies and all governments will be
significantly more indebted. Once the immediate measures to stabilize economies
and businesses have been implemented, governments and businesses alike will
need to evaluate alternatives to source capital to repay excessively high debt
levels. We have spoken in the past about the secular trend of governments
seeking investment from the private sector to acquire and build out
infrastructure. With inflated deficits, along with the desire to stimulate
economic activity, we expect the impetus for this to become even more
pronounced. In addition, many corporations will be susceptible to tighter credit
markets and they will need to reduce debt levels through asset sales. Suffice
it to say, this is an attractive environment for Brookfield Infrastructure to
source investment opportunities for the foreseeable future.
At the moment, the vast
majority of our global investment team have returned to the office, which has
reinvigorated our transaction and outreach activities. We are currently focused
on executing several medium sized tuck-in acquisitions for various businesses
in our energy, transport and data operations. As a result of the potential
synergies, we believe that these acquisitions should be highly accretive if
secured. Furthermore, we are evaluating numerous new investment opportunities
in all of our regions.
During the quarter we made
progress on various initiatives:
• North American Electricity Transmission –
The sale of our North American electricity transmission operation closed in
July, resulting in $60 million of proceeds to BIP and an IRR of 21%. We are
advancing two other asset sale processes that we expect will generate over $700
million of additional liquidity. We believe that essential and de-risked
infrastructure businesses that performed uninterrupted throughout this recent
period will attract strong interest at premium prices.
• Indian Telecom Towers –
The closing of our large-scale acquisition of 130,000 telecom towers in India from
Reliance Jio is expected shortly. We have received positive feedback recently
from Indian regulators that the remaining approvals are on track. Since we
signed our deal, Reliance Jio has raised approximately $20 billion of equity
capital from technology companies and private equity investors which has
further solidified the credit quality of our anchor tenant. We will invest
approximately $500 million of equity (BIP’s share) in the business.
• Capital Markets
Investments – During the broad market sell-off in March, we acquired stakes in
several high-quality infrastructure companies at attractive entry points. The
ensuing rebound allowed us to monetize some of our positions and realize
substantial profits in a short period of time. We have fully exited a number of
these investments, realizing total profits of approximately $40 million (BIP’s
share – approximately $25 million). We continue to accumulate positions in a
handful of companies that we hope will lead to broader strategic initiatives in
time.
• U.S. Midstream – Dislocation in
North American energy markets may provide unique opportunities to invest at
value. Our focus is on highly contracted businesses with solid counterparties,
limited exposure to volume and pricing risk and long-life, critical
infrastructure that complements our existing operations. We believe several
opportunities exist to implement this strategy, both in the public and private
markets.
Lastly, we are very pleased
with the market’s response thus far to Brookfield Infrastructure Corporation
(BIPC). Not only has there been significant demand for these shares but BIPC
was also recently added to the Russell 2000 Index. We intend to support the
growth of BIPC’s public float to improve the company’s trading liquidity, and
recently completed our first initiative in this regard in coordination with
Brookfield Asset Management, who agreed to sell a portion of its holdings in BIPC.
This successful secondary offering in Canada increased the public float
of BIPC by approximately 15%.
Sam Pollock
Chief Executive Officer
Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P
August 5, 2020
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