Houston — AES has completed the sale of its 17% interest in Sao Paulo, Brazil-basedutility Eletropaulo to Italy's Enel SpA and will use the about $310 million ofproceeds from the sale to pay down debt, the company said Thursday. Receive daily email alerts, subscriber notes & personalize your experience. For AES, which bought Eletropaulo in 1990, the sale represents "the finalchapter of our strategic decision to exit from the distribution businessin Brazil," said Andres Gluski, AES President and CEO. AES will begin paying down debt once the funds are received within thenext 60 days, AES said in a statement. AES will now focus, Gluski said, on growing its Brazilian renewablesbusiness, AES Tiete, and on "bringing new technologies, such as energystorage, digitalization and drone applications, to the Brazilian electricsector." For Enel the deal with AES follows the acquisition by subsidiary EnelAmericas of a 73% stake in Brazil's largest power distributor with awinning $2 billion bid on May 30. Eletropaulo distributes power to 5.8million customers in and around the metropolitan area of the city of SaoPaulo, South America's largest city. Iberdrola's Neoenergia unit in Brazil lost out to Enel in the bidding. AES is well known as a grouping of assets located in and managed locallyin 15 countries around the globe but which are overseen from thecompany's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. The number of countries it is active in is now down from 28, and Gluskisaid during an earnings call in early May that he wants to sell assetsand reduce the number of countries its active in to 12. Nonetheless, in addition to AES Tiete in Brazil, AES owns a 67% stake inAES Gener which is building the 531-MW Alto Maipo hydroelectric facilityroughly 30-miles south of Santiago, Chile. AES is also completing a regasification facility near Colon, Panama. SEMPRA'S LATIN ASSETS COULD BE FOCUS OF REVIEW AES bought a controlling interest in Eletropaulo in 1996 at a time when anumber of US and European utilities were in the market for South Americangeneration and T&D assets, many of which were being denationalized. Duke Energy, in 2016, sold 2,073 NW of hydroelectric capacity it hadowned since 1998 in Brazil to China Three Gorges for $1.2 billion incash. China Three Gorges has in recent weeks been pursuing the acquisition ofPortugal's state-owned utility, Energias de Portugal, which ownsrenewable generation assets in Brazil as well as the US. Duke completed its exit from South America with an additional sale of2,300 MW of hydro and thermal generation it had been operating in Peru,Chile, Ecuador and Argentina to I Squared Capital. In an June 12 interview, executives from the activist investors Elliott Management and Bluescape, who are pushing Sempra Energy to conduct a review of their eight "disparate" operating subsidiaries, said that they believeSempra should consider selling its Chilean and Peruvian power distributioncompanies, as well as their Mexican power and natural gas company IEnova. In 2011, Sempra Pipelines & Storage spent about $875 million acquiring a100% stake in Vina del Mar-based Chilquinta Energia and a 76% stake inLima-based Luz del Sur. Sempra bought the stakes from investment group AEI, which had bought thestakes in the two utilities from Public Service Enterprise Group in 2007. -- Jeffrey Ryser, jeffrey.ryser@spglobal.com -- Edited by Matt Eversman, newsdesk@spglobal.com
Enel has acquired an additional 17 % stake in Brazilian utility Eletropaulo for $ 500 m from US - based AES . Enel recently beat out Spain 's Iberdrola to acquire a 73 % stake in Eletropaulo , Brazil 's largest power distributor . US - based AES said it would exit the Brazilian power distribution business , focus on expanding its Brazilian renewables business and would use the proceeds from the sale to pay down debt .