Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) hinted that it may look at re-negotiating the price for acquiring a 75 per cent stake in Krishnapatnam Port Company Limited as economic conditions suffer a drastic change after the deal was announced on January 3 this year.

The Krishnapatnam port acquisition is quite transformational for APSEZ as a company as it helps us achieve the stated objectives around parity of cargo both on the east and the west coast and to service a much larger economic hinterland in the country, Deepak Maheshwari, chief financial officer said in an analyst call on wednesday.

“Clearly, there has been a significant change at least in the medium and in the very short term on the economic conditions and the cargo flows across all ports and across businesses in India because of the lockdown situation. We have to wait for a bit to see as to how this takes shape and whether we renegotiate the acquisition price or not that’s to be seen in the future. At this point, there is a share purchase agreement (SPA) we have signed with them and that is what it is. And, if there are significant changes in the market, of course one can look at it, but till the time we don’t decide that we cannot be talking about it,” Maheshwari added.

On January 3, APSEZ said it has agreed to buy a 75 per cent stake in Krishnapatnam Port Company Ltd, the entity that runs a private deep-water port at Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh’s Nellore district, for an enterprise value of ₹13,500 crore.

The equity portion of the Krishnapatnam deal (excluding the debt held by the port operating company of about ₹7,500 crore) is valued at about ₹6,000 crore, of which APSEZ paid about ₹4,500 crore, according to people familiar with the deal.

The deal was to be closed in 120 days or by May 2 but has been delayed.

“Originally we had 120 days, but this has been pushed out because there are 51 conditions precedent (CP) the sellers have to complete between state approvals to lender approvals to various other approvals which are pending,” said Karan Adani, Chief Executive Officer, APSEZ.

From the 51 CPs, they have only completed eight as of now and we do expect that with this lockdown, lot of these approvals will take time to come, he said.

“From the buyers’ side, the major one for us is the CCI approval. We have already finished two rounds of discussions and queries with CCI and we do expect the CCI approval to come in a month or two. But, till the time the sellers CPs are not completed, we will not be in a position to complete the transaction,” Karan said adding that the deal is now slated to be closed by October-November this year.