Through its subsidiary Axpo International, the company has launched its first program for negotiable European commercial papers, known as Negotiable European Commercial Notes or NEU CP, worth more than half a billion euros. The NEU CP market is “an important and transparent European capital market for international companies to issue short-term debt securities”.
The French central bank, Banque de France, checks whether issuers comply with statutory official requirements. Axpo CFO Joris Gröflin said in a press release that the NEU-CP market provides the electricity company with greater access to foreign investors, thus contributing to optimizing short-term financing options. “This complements our current funding mix and further diversifies and strengthens our funding sources.”
Axpo currently has great financing needs because the electricity market is very volatile. For electricity trading, energy companies must deposit collateral on the European energy exchange. The required margin has multiplied as markets have been moving very strongly for a year and prices have risen significantly. For large electricity producers like Axpo, this means they need much more liquidity.
In October, the company had increased its bank loan limit to 6 billion euros. Prior to that, the company had been provided with a CHF 4 billion emergency line of credit from the federal government at the beginning of September, but had yet to use it.
(SDA)