Neo Solar Power secures USD123.6 million syndicated loan

Neo Solar Power Corporation (NSP) has announced that it has secured an US$123.6 million syndicated loan led by ING Bank.

The signing ceremony has been held on 10th Aug, 2016 at Sheraton Hotel, Hsinchu. The agreement was signed by ING Bank and Chairman of NSP, Sam Hong.

In this syndicated loan, ING Bank is the lead arranger and facility agent. Taiwan Cooperative Bank, Taiwan Business Bank, Yuanta Commercial Bank, First Commercial Bank and Shin Kong Commercial Bank are the co-lead arrangers. The participants are Mega International Commercial Bank, Chang Hwa Bank, Ta Chong Commercial Bank, Land Bank of Taiwan and Entie Commercial Bank。First Commercial Bank also acts the security agent.

To repay the second overseas credit enhanced convertible bonds and diversify the fund raising sources, NSP acquired a 3-year standby letter of credit of US$123.6 million for the issuance of the third overseas credit enhanced convertible bonds. The US$123.6 million equals nearly 1.7 times oversubscription from the banks which shows that the Taiwanese banking sector recognizes the positive future toward solar industry.

ING Bank reported:

“Despite the recent noises about the low orders visibility and the declining ASP, there are still strong support and active participation from the banks because of NSP’s outstanding performance on high-efficiency & high-reliability products, cost reduction progress, and downstream business expansion.”

Sam Hong, Chairman of NSP says

“Energy Saving and Carbon Reduction has become one of the common targets globally and solar energy is a renewable and everlasting energy to reach the target. With the effort of the whole solar value chain in the past years, solar energy has been more and more cost effective. The Grid-Parity has been reached in many countries and therefore the active demand occurs without the reliance on governments’ subsidies. The demand for solar energy is also increasing rapidly in many developing and undeveloped countries. According to the data from the market research agencies Solabuzz/IHS, global solar installations will be over 60GW in 2016, and boosted to 80GW in 2018 with a significant growth potential. NSP possess excellent R&D and management team and has the integrated business scope from mid to downstream including solar cells, solar modules and solar systems. It is believed that NSP will be maintaining a growing operation performance and solid financial structure in the coming future.”