12 May 2020
Gore Street Energy Storage Fund plc
(the 'Company' or 'Gore Street')
Construction Resumes on NI Assets
Resilient Performance Across Operational Assets
Gore Street, London's first listed energy storage fund, is pleased to announce that construction has resumed on the Company's two 50MW assets in Northern Ireland, adhering to strict social distancing measures stipulated by the UK Government. Yesterday NEC, as the main Engineering, Procurement and Construction ("EPC") contractor, safely recommenced the programme on both the Mullavilly and Drumkee sites.
Due to the Company's conservative prior assumptions, these assets remain on track to become fully operational in time to secure the valuable DS3 uncapped contracts in April 2021. Construction of the Northern Irish assets is scheduled to be completed in December 2020, allowing sufficient time to complete necessary asset testing before the assets go online.
As previously guided, the DS3 contracts available for these assets have highly attractive return profiles likely to be considerably higher than the Company's 10% unlevered target IRR for portfolio assets.
Separately, there has been no change to the estimated completion date of the Company's two 30MW assets under construction in the Republic of Ireland.
Alex O'Cinneide, CEO of Gore Street Capital, the Company's investment adviser commented:
"We are delighted that construction has resumed so quickly and safely at the Company's assets in Northern Ireland and that we remain on track for receiving revenue under the DS3 contracts as per our original acquisition announcement. The planning to enable us to safely resume started from the day after we closed the sites and that effort has delivered this excellent outcome. Our assets perform an essential and increasingly important service to balance grid supply in multiple markets, and those services are only expected to increase in importance. Accordingly, performance across all the Company's operational assets remains resilient and they continue to produce cash returns in line with expectations. Further, our pipeline of potential acquisitions remains robust and we look forward to updating shareholders on our pipeline progress in due course. Our partners across the portfolio, both assets in construction and those in operation, are performing a wonderful job in difficult circumstances, as are all of my colleagues in Gore Street."
The Legal Entity Identifier of the Company is 213800GPUNVGG81G4O21.
For further information:
Gore Street Capital Limited |
|
Alex O'Cinneide |
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3826 0290 |
Shore Capital |
|
Anita Ghanekar / Darren Vickers / Hugo Masefield (Corporate Advisory) Henry Willcocks / Fiona Conroy (Corporate Broking) |
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7601 6128 |
Media enquiries
Buchanan |
|
Charles Ryland / Henry Wilson / George Beale |
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7466 5000 |
|
Email: Gorestreet@buchanan.uk.com |
JTC (UK) Limited, Company Secretary Tel: +44 (0) 20 7409 0181
Notes to Editors
About Gore Street Energy Storage Fund plc
Gore Street is London's first listed energy storage fund and seeks to provide Shareholders with a significant opportunity to invest in a diversified portfolio of utility scale energy storage projects. In addition to growth through exploiting its considerable pipeline, the Company aims to deliver consistent and robust dividend yield as income distributions to its Shareholders.
The Company targets an annual dividend of 7.0% o f NAV per Ordinary Share in each financial year, subject to a minimum target of 7.0 pence per Ordinary Share. Dividends are paid quarterly.