Moser Baer sells 6.5 per cent in photo-voltaic unit to equity firms
04 Sep 2008
Mumbai: Optical storage media manufacturer Moser Baer India has sold 6.5 per cent stake in its photo-voltaic unit for Rs411 crore to a consortium of investors, including Nomura and CDC group, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, IDFC PE and IDFC.
The company plans to use the funds for capacity expansion of its high efficiency crystalline silicon and thin film solar verticals. It currently has an annual capacity of 120 MW, including 40 MW of amorphous silicon film modules.
''Moser Baer plans to use the funds to expand capacity of crystalline silicon and thin film solar vertical,'' group chief financial officer Yogesh B Mathur said, adding the the transaction valued Moser Baer's PV business at Rs6,350 crore ($1.44 billion).
Moser Baer had raised Rs400 crore through private equity funding last November and with the current dilution has a total of Rs811 crore of private funding.
Mathur said the company will use the funds to ramp up production in Greater Noida plant and has also acquired land in Chennai, to achieve 500 MW proposed annualised capacity by 2011.
The Chennai and the Greater Noida plants will manufacture Gen 8.5 thin film panels measuring 5.72 square metres.
The company expects the solar panel market to have a 43 per cent compounded annual growth rate and is poised to achieve grid parity in the short to medium term.
The global solar panel market has grown from $13 billion in 2005 to an estimated $ 40 billion this year and is projected to grow to $50-70 billion by 2010.
