RWE Spins-Off 'innogy' in $22 Billion Listing

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Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--Germany saw its biggest public listing in 16 years as utility RWE AG (FWB:RWE) (Essen, Germany) spun off its more profitable power businesses as a new business entity, innogy.

Stock in the new company was listed at 36 euros ($40) and traded a little higher and lower than that throughout the day, valuing the company at the expected 20 billion euro ($22.4 billion). innogy will comprise RWE's renewable energy, electricity grids and retail operations, while the company's loss-making conventional power business will remain under the RWE banner.

RWE is Germany's second-largest utility after E.ON SE (FWB:EOAN) (Düsseldorf) and both companies have opted to spin off key businesses following years of financial losses due to low electricity prices across Europe.

RWE Chief Executive Officer Peter Terium outlined Innogy's global expansion plans with the U.S. at the top of the list. The company hopes to capitalise on the growing move towards grid modernisation, wind energy, electric vehicles and solar projects.

"We want to invest from around 6.5 billion euros from 2016 to 2018," Terium told Welt am Sonntag newspaper, spread across networks and infrastructure as well as new European windfarms and, for the first time, projects in the U.S.

Terium noted that while a lot of wind energy has been based in Texas "we want to go into other U.S. states to build smaller parks on sites with difficult wind profiles. There are not many companies that can build a profitable windfarm under these conditions."

The company said it has been successful in recent weeks in convincing Californian authorities about accepting the same type of technology and standards used in Germany for electric vehicle charging stations. California leads the U.S. with 200,000 electric vehicles on the roads, but the state is planning to boost that number to 1.5 million by 2025.

Last month, Industrial Info reported on how RWE had bought its way into the growing energy storage sector with the proposed purchase of fellow German solar and storage company, Belectric Solar & Battery Holding GmbH (Kolitzheim, Germany). Belectric designs, installs, operates and maintains utility-scale photovoltaic plants and also is a key player in the budding large-scale battery storage arena. For additional information, see September 1, 2016, article--RWE Buys Belectric's Solar and Storage Business.

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