Unique Meghnaghat Power signs $463m foreign loan deal

Unique Meghnaghat Power Limited, a 584-MW gas-based combined-cycle power plant, has signed a $463 million loan agreement with different foreign lenders to meet its debt requirement.

Unique Meghnaghat Power is a joint venture entity of Unique Hotel & Resorts PLC, Strategic Finance Limited, Nebras Power Investment Management BV, and GE Capital Global Energy Investment BV.

The loan will be provided at a 75:25 debt-equity ratio, where Unique Hotel has 37.24 per cent economic interest. The tenure of the loan is 15 years, said Unique Hotel in a filing on the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) on Tuesday.

Of the $463 million loan, $270 million will come from Standard Chartered Bank, $110 million from the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, $45 million from the Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft (DEG), and $38 million from the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID).

Unique Meghnaghat Power was established for the construction and operation of a 584-MW gas-based combined cycle power plant in Narayanganj on a build-own-operate basis for 22 years.

Chief Financial Officer of Unique Meghnaghat Power, Anupam Hayat told The Business Post that the company signed the $463 million loan agreement virtually with foreign lenders for a period of 15 years to meet the debt requirement of the project.

Unique Meghnaghat Power is a special-purpose vehicle incorporated in September 2018 in Bangladesh which will generate power in September-October this year, he said.

The power generation company said that it has appointed one of the most renowned contractors, General Electric (GE), as its engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor.

Reputable consultants like Tractebel from Belgium as owner’s engineer; AECOM from India as environmental consultant; and Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) as financial adviser have also been appointed, according to the company website.

The power plant will be run by natural gas or re-gasified liquefied natural gas (RLNG) and be based on combined-cycle technology. The plant will comprise GE’s latest H-class gas turbine, the GE 9HA.01 model, a heat recovery steam generator, and a steam turbine.

Unique Hotel and Resorts Limited, owner of the luxury hotel The Westin Dhaka, posted a staggering 463 per cent year-on-year surge in net profit in H1 of the current fiscal. The publicly traded company reported Tk 44.75 crore in net profit in the July-December period of the fiscal year 2022–23, compared with Tk 7.94 crore in the same period last fiscal year.

Both revenue and net profit for the hotel and hospitality management company jumped significantly.

Its earnings per share (EPS) rose to Tk 1.52 in H1 of the current fiscal, from Tk 0.27 from the same period of last fiscal.

The company’s current fiscal’s profit was Tk 29.40 crore in Q2 which was a Tk 7.92 crore in the same period last fiscal.

The company’s earnings per share at Q2 stood at Tk 1 against Tk 0.27 for the same quarter last fiscal year.

Md Sharif Hasan, director (regulatory affairs) at Unique Hotel and Resorts, told The Business Post, “with the ease of the pandemic situation, hotel and resort businesses were expected to rise. As a result, our earnings grew sharply in the first half of the current fiscal year,"

The company’s net asset value (NAV) per share stood at Tk 84.79 as of December 2022 which was Tk 84.73 as on June 2022.

Unique Hotel and Resorts paid a 15 per cent cash dividend to its general shareholders for the year ending in June 2022. It paid a 10 per cent cash dividend in the fiscal year 2020–21.

As per the financial report, its EPS stood at Tk 3.20 in FY22 against Tk 1.32 in the previous fiscal.

With a market capitalisation of Tk 1,851 crore, the company has a paid-up capital of Tk 294 crore.

Besides, the company holds a surplus reserve of Tk 1,581 crore.

Incorporated in 2000, Unique Hotel and Resorts received approval to operate business under the brand name ‘The Westin Dhaka’ on July 1, 2007.

The company also owns the five-star Sheraton hotel in the capital’s Banani, and the HANSA in Uttara.

Its share price rose to Tk 67.50 on Tuesday at the Dhaka Stock Exchange.