INPP’s vote of confidence in UK market

International Public Partnerships (INPP), the London Stock Exchange-listed infrastructure investor advised by Babcock and Brown spinout Amber Infrastructure, announced last week that its net asset value per share for the six months to 30 June 2010 had risen from 112.1p to 112.9p compared with the previous six-month period. The firm also announced a half-year dividend of 2.85p per share, up 3 percent.

During the reporting period, the firm said, it had outperformed the FTSE 250 index by 2.5 percent and the FTSE All Share index by 10.4 percent.

INPP said that the £89.3 million (€108.1 million; $137.5 million) it raised in January 2010 was on course to be fully invested by the end of this year. The firm, which listed in November 2006 with a market capitalisation of £300 million, previously raised £84 million in April 2008. At 13.39 BST today, the firm had a market capitalisation of £529.2 million.

In early August, INPP was part of a consortium including Amber Infrastructure and Transmission Capital Partners that was awarded three out of seven projects awarded by regulator Ofgem for the long-term licence and operation of UK offshore transmission assets. The projects involved cable connections to the recently constructed offshore wind farms at Barrow, Gunfleet Sands and Robin Rigg, accounting for a combined generation capacity of 430 megawatts.

Further opportunities presented by offshore wind power transmission projects was one of the reasons cited by INPP for its continued optimism regarding the UK market. The firm is shortlisted for two further such projects expected to be awarded at the end of 2010 or early 2011. It also believes that new opportunities in the sector with a total development value of up to £14 billion are expected over the next nine years.

In its results announcement, INPP cited three other areas which it says “will continue to offer very attractive opportunities”: local and community health (such as the UK National Health Service’s LIFT programme); secondary PPP assets as existing owners look to recapitalise balance sheets; and a “very significant new pipeline” of projects in Australia and Canada.

It added that “the utilisation of private capital to finance public infrastructure projects has now become the norm in most developed economies”.