Project Financing is a unique financing technique that has been used on many high-profile corporate projects, including Euro Disneyland and the Euro Tunnel. Employing a carefully engineered financing mix, it has long been used to fund large-scale natural resource projects, from pipelines and refineries to electric-generating facilities and hydroelectric projects. Increasingly, project financing is emerging as the preferred alternative to conventional methods of financing infrastructure and other large-scale projects worldwide.
Project Financing discipline includes understanding the rationale for project financing, how to prepare the financial plan, assess the risks, design the financing mix, and raise the funds. In addition, one must understand the cogent analyses of why some project financing plans have succeeded while others have failed. A knowledge-base is required regarding the design of contractual arrangements to support project financing; issues for the host government legislative provisions, public/private infrastructure partnerships, public/private financing structures; credit requirements of lenders, and how to determine the project's borrowing capacity; how to prepare cash flow projections and use them to measure expected rates of return; tax and accounting considerations; and analytical techniques to validate the project's feasibility.
The main challenges of financing large-scale projects Projects like power plants, toll roads or airports share a number of characteristics that make their financing particularly challenging. First, they require large indivisible investments in a single-purpose asset. In most industrial sectors where project finance is used, such as oil and gas and petrochemicals, over 50% of the total value of projects consists of investments exceeding $1 billion. Second, projects usually undergo two main phases (construction and operation) characterised by quite different risks and cash flow patterns. Construction primarily involves technological and environmental risks, whereas operation is exposed to market risk (fluctuations in the prices of inputs or outputs) and political risk, among other factors.4 Most of the capital expenditures are concentrated in the initial construction phase, with revenues instead starting to accrue only after the project has begun operation.
Third, the success of large projects depends on the joint effort of several related parties (from the construction company to the input supplier, from the host government to the off-taker5) so that coordination failures, conflicts of interest and free-riding of any project participant can have significant costs. Moreover, managers have substantial discretion in allocating the usually large free cash flows generated by the project operation, which can potentially lead to opportunistic behaviour and inefficient investments.
Project Financing discipline includes understanding the rationale for project financing, how to prepare the financial plan, assess the risks, design the financing mix, and raise the funds. In addition, one must understand the cogent analyses of why some project financing plans have succeeded while others have failed. A knowledge-base is required regarding the design of contractual arrangements to support project financing; issues for the host government legislative provisions, public/private infrastructure partnerships, public/private financing structures; credit requirements of lenders, and how to determine the project's borrowing capacity; how to prepare cash flow projections and use them to measure expected rates of return; tax and accounting considerations; and analytical techniques to validate the project's feasibility.
The main challenges of financing large-scale projects Projects like power plants, toll roads or airports share a number of characteristics that make their financing particularly challenging. First, they require large indivisible investments in a single-purpose asset. In most industrial sectors where project finance is used, such as oil and gas and petrochemicals, over 50% of the total value of projects consists of investments exceeding $1 billion. Second, projects usually undergo two main phases (construction and operation) characterised by quite different risks and cash flow patterns. Construction primarily involves technological and environmental risks, whereas operation is exposed to market risk (fluctuations in the prices of inputs or outputs) and political risk, among other factors.4 Most of the capital expenditures are concentrated in the initial construction phase, with revenues instead starting to accrue only after the project has begun operation.
Third, the success of large projects depends on the joint effort of several related parties (from the construction company to the input supplier, from the host government to the off-taker5) so that coordination failures, conflicts of interest and free-riding of any project participant can have significant costs. Moreover, managers have substantial discretion in allocating the usually large free cash flows generated by the project operation, which can potentially lead to opportunistic behaviour and inefficient investments.
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