- J-Power has bid A$380.9 million for Australian renewable energy firm, Genex Power.
- J-Power is a joint owner and developer of Genex’s Kidston wind project.
Japan’s Electric Power Development (J-Power) has bid A$380.9 million ($248.7 million) for Australian renewable energy firm Genex Power. This development results from Japan’s rapidly growing appetite for overseas acquisitions.
Genex shares surged nearly 38% in early trade today to A$0.255, a more than three-year high. The broader S&P/ASX200 was up 0.2 per cent. The A$0.275 per share offer represents a 48.6 per cent premium on its last close from last week.
The Japanese firm, which owns a 7.7 per cent stake in Genex, had previously offered to buy the company for A$0.240 per share, Genex revealed in a regulatory filing on Monday, March 4.
J-Power is a joint owner and developer of Genex’s Kidston wind project and Bulli Creek clean energy project in the Australian state of Queensland. The new takeover bid requires 75 per cent support from Genex shareholders and approval from Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB).
If they do not achieve this level of support, J-Power said it would launch an off-market takeover at A$0.27 per share, which would need at least 50.1 per cent of shareholder backing to go ahead.
Genex’s major shareholder is Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar’s Skip Capital, which holds 19.99 per cent of the renewables firm. In 2022, Farquhar led a consortium that made an indicative bid for Genex at A$0.25 per share before walking away from the deal.
The move comes as part of the Japanese company’s efforts to boost its renewable energy assets overseas by 1.5 gigawatts by end-March 2026 from end-March 2018. According to its website, the company held almost 10 GW of renewable energy in operation worldwide as of April 2023.