Macquarie Acquires Ziton, Octopus Energy Enters US Market

This week on News Flash, the hosts discuss Macquarie Asset
Management's acquisition of Ziton, a Denmark based provider of
operations and maintenance services to the offshore industry. Also,
Octopus Energy solidifies its entry into the US renewables market
with an investment to create 600 megawatts of new solar farms in
the U. S. And Berkshire Hathaway consolidates their company
operations, opening the door for more renewable projects. Sign up
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wind technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard
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https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech -
www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech,
and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro,
and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard Lightning Tech,
Joel Saxum. And this Is your newsflash news flashes brought to you
by our friends at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that
generates revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at
IntelStor. com Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway energy, the
second largest us clean power owner will pay about 3. 9 billion for
the minority 8 percent stake held by the family of late board
member, Walter Scott. The deal involves 2. 37 billion in cash. The
exchange of Berkshire Class B shares for 1. 6 billion BHE shares
and issuance of a 600 million one year note. As of January 1st,
Berkshire Hathaway Energy owned about 14 gigawatts of clean energy
capacity, including 12 gigawatts of wind. And roughly 2 gigawatts
of solar and storage. Now, Phil, Berkshire Hathaway Energy has been
consolidating operations over the last 6 to 12 months. Is this part
of that larger plan to consolidate? Philip Totaro: It sounds like
it although this is also obviously a bit of a legacy thing with
taking over the stake held by, by Scott's family and presumably in
some kind of a trust or something. Like. It's giving Berkshire
Hathaway Energy the opportunity, as you mentioned, to just
consolidate the, the company's ownership and consolidate the brands
under the Berkshire Hathaway Energy umbrella, which theoretically
gives them more power. Bandwidth and more capacity to keep
borrowing if they need to borrow to go, build out the pipeline of
renewable energy projects that they've got. So one thing that we've
talked about recently on the show is the fact that there's a lot of
investment funds and firms coming into the renewable sector. What
they bring with them is capital, or the ability to go leverage the,
the capital base that they've got to go borrow money. So for your
big utility company owner operators, they want to be able to do a
similar thing. And this is going to help kind of bolster the, the
company's ability to, to do that. Joel Saxum: Yeah. It's the same
thing. Like Phil saying, we've talked about on the show before
Berkshire Hathaway backed Warren Buffett, big money is following
the same concept as you're seeing with a lot of other big money
groups, Vanguard, BlackRock, all these different and, and of
course, pension funds and whatnot of putting their capital Into
energy infrastructure world, right? So they're helping build up the
energy transition, but that's because they see it as good business.
So when you see big money coming into a certain sector, you can bet
it's going to be around a while and they're betting banking on
success. UK Allen Hall: based Octopus Energy has made two new
investments in the U. S. green energy market. Following its initial
entry just three months ago with solar farm acquisitions in Ohio
and Pennsylvania, the company sealed a deal with solar farm
developer SoCal to help them rapidly scale up, targeting 600
megawatts of new solar farms in the U. S. Over the next five years,
primarily in Texas, this is expected to generate enough green power
for about 40, 000 Texan homes. UK based solar developer Zestec,
supported by Octopus Energy, is also moving into the U. S. market,
focusing on commercial and industrial rooftop solar projects. Okay,
Phil, so the solar industry is really ramping up in the United
States. Octopus has been active there and is now bringing others
over. The rapid development of solar in the United States is
pushing a lot of investment, too. How fast do you expect solar to
grow here over the next 12 months? Philip Totaro: There's a
tremendous amount of solar projects in the pipeline of project
development pipeline, as well as in the interconnection cubes. And
the reason for the timing of this, and why we want to cover a solar
play here on, on the wind energy podcast is the fact that Octopus
Group in general, an octopus energy, they're, they're obviously
energy focus subsidiary is, is doing this at this time is they feel
the conditions are right for. Their type of business model and what
that is, is they sometimes will go leverage the capital that they
bring to the table, but they also have a pretty unique perspective
where they've partnered with companies in the UK, like Ripple
Energy, for instance, where they do either fractional ownership or
community development. Of sites on behalf of a multitude of, of
different owners and investors in a project. And so that's part of
the angle here is for them to be able to deploy a rather
substantial amount of capital into, much smaller, um, solar plays
within the market. In, in the US which hasn't really been
particularly well penetrated. We've got a lot of corporate and
industrial power buying for solar and, and industrial rooftop
solar. Obviously we've got some residential and that still, needs
to be built out. We're not quite at the same levels of penetration,
at least on a percentage wise basis compared to places like
Australia, for example. But there's, there's more room to grow and
as octopus, pardon the pun, but extends his tentacles and, and,
tries to, Ensure that they've got a, a presence in in both utility
scale, wind utility scale, solar utility scale, energy storage
technology. This also gives them a chance with these partnerships
to get into the residential solar market and ensure that they could
take advantage of. The growth potential that that we see in the
market. Joel Saxum: So in the United States, there's a two, two
very separate markets for solar, right? You have your big utility
scale stuff and you have your smaller stuff that is industrial
commercial residential, whether it's rooftops or or some people
putting solar panels on top of parking structures, these kind of
things. As Phil mentioned, Australia is leading the world, of
course, in this, in this space of integration with solar and the
community itself. Octopus coming in with their knowledge, their
expertise, and some capital behind them to make a move in this
sector. It's a good thing for the energy transition within the
United States. Allen Hall: Macquarie Asset Management is set to
acquire 100 percent ownership of Ziton, a Denmark based provider of
operations and maintenance services to the offshore wind industry.
The acquisition is expected to be completed in December of this
year, or the first quarter of 2025, subject to regulatory
approvals. Zyton recently launched a new brand identity, Zyton 2.
0, signaling its focus on future decades of O& M service
solutions for offshore wind turbines. All right, Phil, so Macquarie
has been investing in renewable energy, and particularly in wind.
The push offshore and then being an australian based organization
is that to prepare for the offshore growth in australia or they
really focused on offshore Philip Totaro: growth over in northern
europe they're looking at a global perspective Allen. Is it on
themselves has been active in eleven different countries on i think
it's something like eighty or eighty five different projects. And.
It's mostly European but that's also based on the legacy of their,
EPC vessels and service vessels that they've developed and utilized
over the past few decades. Now, with the industry looking to push
to much bigger scale and heights in, in terms of turbine size, as
well as the pace of deployment globally with the consolidation in
the market with Kedler. For example, and, other companies, Van Oord
and Bonner and, and companies like this, really building out their
portfolio of vessels. The Chinese are also starting to look like
they're going to be competition globally as far as both the
equipment providers and the EPC contractors and vessels even if
you're gonna have a European flagged vessel, you may end up still
having it fabricated over in China just because of how cost
effective it can be to do that. So this play on behalf of Macquarie
is helping them kind of build pieces of a puzzle where, you've seen
them make acquisitions in onshore wind, offshore wind, some solar
and storage, they've made acquisitions in asset management. They've
made acquisitions now in companies that can provide services. I
would anticipate that they're not done yet making acquisitions, but
it's also part of bringing a lot of capabilities in house and
positioning themselves for the future of the industry. So, Joel
Saxum: talking at the recent Hamburg event, a lot of, People got
together, a lot of ideas were shared, a lot of information was
shared. One of the things you heard out of the, coming out of that
market over there in the EU is that there is some consolidation
going on. And part of this goes hand in hand with some margin
compression and some other things that are happening within the
market. But when you see a group like Zaytan that,