Road developer, IRB Infrastructure is preparing to participate in the second toll-operate-transfer rights (TOT) auction by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on its own without forming a joint venture with an international partner, according to Anil Yadav, Group CFO.

The company has earlier this year emerged as the only Indian developer bidding in the first TOT auction for a bundle of nine projects in joint venture with Italy’s Atlantia. In taht auction, Macquarie Group emerged as winner after bidding Rs. 9,681 crore as against NHAi’s estimate of around Rs 6,200 crore.

“One TOT (package) is in the pipeline, and we are qualified individually also. So if the size is big, we can bid in the JV but if it is smaller, we could participate alone,” Yadav said adding that the second TOT auctions is likely to happen by end of 2018.

The company’s board has earlier this year approved fund raising of up to Rs 1,500 crore for participating in TOT auction.

IRB Infrastructure had reported its net profit for the second quarter, ended September 30, stood at Rs. 173 crore, up by 32 per cent as against Rs 131 crore in the corresponding period last year. The company’s total income stood at Rs 1,485 crore, up by 20 per cent from Rs 1,242 crore in Q2FY18.

The company’s EPC Order Book stood at around Rs. 13,200 crore including at the end of Q2 FY19. While no new order were bagged by the developer during past two quarters, the company expects NHAI to get back into the auctioning mode.

“NHAI has already identified 50 or 60 projects for auctioning, but they wanted to see that financial closure is happening. So probably before general elections we will see around Rs. 70,000-80,000 crore worth of projects coming from NHAI side,” Yadav told BusinessLine.

According to him, around 50-60 road projects have been out in the market targeting to achieve financial closure by end of October. Around half of this have tied up financed, he said, adding that players with good track record of completing projects on time and having cash-flows able to support equity infusions whenever required do not face challenges with funding.

IRB Infrastructure is also in the process of achieving financial closure for its Rs. 3,400 crore Hapur-Moradabad build-operate-transfer (BOT) project bagged in March this year.

The company has recently tied up fund for three hybrid annuity model (HAM) projects which are partly funded by NHAI and developer itself, apart from debt portion. The company raised project finance of over ₹2,600 crore for three projects from NBFCs and banks within a span of 20 days and at interest rate below 10 per cent despite the overall lending scenario has been challenging lately, especially in the infrastructure space.

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