The Hindu Business Line : Noida Toll Bridge to raise Rs 200 cr via GDR issue

NOIDA Toll Bridge Company Ltd (NTBCL), a special purpose vehicle promoted by Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services Ltd (IL&FS), is planning to raise Rs 200 crore ($45 million) through GDR issue in March.

The issue would have a greenshoe option of 10 per cent.

A 20-year bond issue aimed at raising another Rs 175 crore would follow the GDR issue, that is part of a capital restructuring plans of the company.

The Rs 375-crore, to be raised through the two issues, would be used to replace the high-cost debt on the books of the company that would be maturing by 2013-14, a company official said.

NTBCL's board of directors has accepted `LAA (SO)' rating from ICRA for its proposed 20-year bond issue. The rating is subject to stipulated conditions.

The proposed bond issue will be first long-tenor bond by an infrastructure company with a tenor of 20 years. The bond issuance is aimed at insurance companies and pension funds looking for long-term infrastructure assets.

This will more closely align the financing structure with the useful life of the asset, the company said.

Post-issue, NTBCL would be in a position to channelise higher cash surpluses in the near term to fund its expansion and adjacent linkages.

The company also announced that the traffic on the Delhi Noida Toll Bridge, known as the DND Flyway, for the financial year 2006 is likely to be 20 per cent higher than the forecasted traffic.

NTBCL had commissioned Wilbur Smith Associates (WSA), in 2002, to perform a traffic study and forecast traffic up to financial year 2021. The company has consistently outperformed the traffic forecasts of the WSA study.

The company, at the instance of Collins Stewart Ltd, the UK-based investment bank which is lead managing the GDR issue, has commissioned an independent validation of the future traffic forecasts of WSA.

The validation study performed by Halcrow Consulting India Ltd concluded that the traffic on the DND Flyway is expected to grow significantly more than that estimated in the WSA study.

The Halcrow study has forecasted that the traffic will be higher by 28 per cent in FY 2007, going up to 62 per cent in FY 2011 as compared to WSA forecasts.

According to Halcrow study, it is estimated that daily vehicle trips on the DND Flyway will increase to 2,00,500 in FY 2021 and that, based on this forecast and other operating assumptions reviewed by Halcrow, the present value of the Delhi Noida Toll Bridge (based on discounted cashflow analysis) has been determined as Rs 1,790 crore.

Earlier this month, NTBCL had agreed on a revised O&M (operations & management) fee structure with the O&M operators of DND Flyway, Intertoll Management Services BV and Intertoll India Consultants Private Ltd.

The revised O&M fee structure will result in annual savings in O&M expenses of Rs 1.1 crore in FY 2007 and the savings will increase gradually to Rs 7.2 crore per annum by FY 2012.

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Noida Toll Bridge to raise Rs 200 cr via GDR issue