Confident that share price will soon reflect underlying health of business: ReNew Power CEO

ReNew Power, India's first energy company to list overseas, is confident that the growth in underlying business will eventually reflect in their share price, said the company's CEO Sumant Sinha on June 30.

Green energy stocks have taken a hit owing to the Russia-Ukraine war and the current inflationary macroeconomic environment, but ReNew Power's financials are stronger than the time of listing, Sinha said in an interview to CNBC-TV18 .

"We have about one and a half million dollars of cash in our balance sheet as of March 31, 2022 and a total portfolio of 12.8 gigawatts, out of which eight gigawatts is commissioned and another 4.8 gigawatts projects that we have PPAs for. These are not futuristic projects but projects that we are working on and will be commissioning," he said.

The company will choose to grow inorganically through acquisitions if the opportunities are priced at sensible rates, Sinha said. Currently, ReNew Power is in the process of closing a deal for a 500-megawatt wind acquisition worth Rs 3,000 crore, he added.

For future projects, the company is optimistic about the prospects of green hydrogen space. "Green hydrogen is one of the most exciting opportunities that has emerged in the energy space for quite a long while.
And it gives India the opportunity of really moving much more rapidly towards cutting down initially fossil fuel imports, and then eventually, at some level, becoming actually energy independent," Sinha said.

In April this year, ReNew Power had entered into a joint venture with Indian Oil Corporation and Larsen and Toubro for a green hydrogen project.

Sinha said that costs associated with green hydrogen technology, which has been a major hurdle in large scale adoption, should settle in the next three to five years. Additionally, government regulations towards green hydrogen purchase targets would boost the growth prospects of the sector, he said.

ReNew Energy, which listed in the US stock markets as a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC), is confident of more investments in the renewable energy sector and is looking towards consolidating their position in the space, Sinha said.

The renewable energy space has seen investments from conglomerates like Reliance Industries and Adani Enterprises in the recent past, however, Sinha said that the market is big enough for all players.

" India needs to add so much capacity over the next eight to nine years. We have to get up to about 450 gigawatts from the 130-140 we are at right now and spend about $500 billion in the entire green energy ecosystem between wind and solar generation capacity, batteries and transmission infrastructure. And no single company, however large, can do it on its own," he said.