Lanco Infra may look at stake sale option for new projects

The recent tariff hike in Tamil Nadu has come as a relief to Lanco Infratech which is confronted with delayed payments from various state electricity boards. The company believes a similar hike in other states will help the company improve receivables.

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, K Rajagopal, CEO --Power, Lanco Infratech said that it is very critical to implement SEB restructuring package to improve their situation and is pending since quite sometime now.

SEBs have been facing financial stress due to power procurement costs in the past. Over the last one year, many of them have gone into debt restructuring and Tamil Nadu being one of them, has raised funds via government bonds.

The company is looking to unlock value to meet equity requirements for its new projects and for the same it may look at stake sale options for a few projects.

Last month, there were reports that Lanco has begun talks with JSW Energy and Adani Power to sell a power plant in Karnataka as banks pile pressure on debt-laden power companies to sell assets and improve cash flow.

The company is also concerned about bridging gap between the cost of recovery and cost of production and significant fall in its plant load factors overall due to fuel shortage also n eeds to addressed.