Adani Airport raises $250 mn from Standard Chartered Bank consortium

Adani Airport Holdings Ltd (AAHL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Adani Enterprises Ltd, has received a $250 million senior secured 3-year external commercial borrowing (ECB) facility from a consortium of Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) and Barclays Bank PLC. The facility also has an option to raise an additional $200 million. Eye on boosting its foray into B2C infrastructure assets, Adani Airport says it'll use the funds for capital expenditure and the development of six airports.

"The first phase of our capital management plan is now set in motion, with the funding of Adani Airport, Mumbai International Airport (MIAL) and Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIAL), and we will now focus on scaling up the airports business into one of the largest airport platforms globally," says a company spokesperson.

The latest fundraising comes after MIAL, which owns and operates the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) in Mumbai, and is the second-largest airport in India, raised $750 million in senior secured private placement notes from Apollo-managed credit funds. Apollo’s Credit business was able to provide a scaled, long-term capital solution for MIAL, with the majority of proceeds from the 7.25-years, $750 million notes to be used to refinance existing shorter maturity loans and new capital expenditure.

With this, Adani Airport has tapped three different pools of capital cumulating to $2.74 billion.

The company operates a network of eight airports in major cities of India, controlling 50% of the top 10 domestic routes. It commands 23% of the total Indian air traffic, and 30% of India’s air cargo and handles 200 million consumers, including passengers and non-passengers.

Adani Airport parent Adani Enterprises' net profit during the Jan-March quarter of FY22 rose 30% to Rs 304 crore, while its income was up 84% to Rs 25,142 crore.

Adani Enterprises is the flagship company of Gautam Adani-led Adani Group, with interests in Adani Ports to transmission & power, and green energy, data centres for gas and edible oil. Now the company is expanding its media footprints as well. Adani Enterprises last month had set up AMG Media Networks to expand its "publishing, advertising, broadcasting, content distribution" network. Before that in March, Adani Media Ventures agreed to buy Quintillion Business Media, the Indian partner of Bloomberg LP. The company has also hired Sanjay Pugalia as the chief of Adani Media Ventures to speed its expansion.

Adani Enterprises' shares are trading 1.9% down at Rs 2,306 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE). The stock has risen 34.82% in the past six months, while 28.4% in the year-to-date period. At the same time, the benchmark BSE Sensex has been down 9.71% in the past six months, while 7.80% in the year-to-date period.