Polaris Renewable sees shift in opportunities after Puerto Rico purchase

Polaris Renewable Energy has secured regulatory approval in Puerto Rico to acquire the 26MW Punta Lima wind farm.

Chief executive Marc Murnaghan made the comment during the Toronto-based company's latest earnings call.

"We're now moving to closing which we would expect will happen before the end of this quarter," said Murnaghan, who highlighted plans for a brownfield expansion at Punta Lima as part of the US territory's grid storage push.

"We would be shifting in terms of brownfield opportunities a little bit from the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico as soon as we close," he added.

Regarding the Dominican Republic, the CEO said things have been going slower, but "we still think that solar plus storage – and storage is the key here – is going to remain an important part of our organic growth [in the Dominican Republic] … they're just trying to work out the regulations."

On the M&A front, Murnaghan commented that the pipeline remains robust and that something could materialize in the back half of the year, with potential opportunities in the Dominican Republic, Panama and Puerto Rico, as well as other regional markets not part of Polaris' portfolio.

The company's current regional footprint comprises the 72MW San Jacinto geothermal plant in Nicaragua, solar plants Canoa I (25MW) and Vista Hermosa (10MW) in the Dominican Republic and Panama, respectively, Ecuador hydro San José de Minas (6MW) and Peru hydros Canchayllo (5MW), El Carmen (8MW) and 8 de Agosto (20MW).

Polaris' third quarter MD&A is available in the Documents box in the top-right corner of the screen.