CERES INFRASTRUCTURE PRIVATE DEBT FUND
Ceres Infrastructure Asset Management is the leading independent private debt fund dedicated to financing the renovation of existing core infrastructure assets in the United States of America.
Ceres partners with the public and/or private sector to give its fund investors the opportunity to finance large core infrastructure projects in various sectors.
- Transportation (airports, toll roads, bridges, tunnels, rail, parkings, etc.),
- Distribution (water, waste and energy pipelines/grids),
- Utilities,
- Construction,
- Telecommunication (optic fiber networks),
- Social infrastructure (student housing, etc.) and
- Specialty infrastructure (government/military buildings, courthouses, storages).
How Ceres Works: Ceres deploys large amounts of senior debt (> US$ 500 million) over the long term (> 20 years) to single infrastructure projects PPP. Ceres is an alternative source of financing (to banks or muni-bonds) for municipalities/public entities, corporations and/or private equity funds to realize their asset renovation in a prompt, effective and cost-efficient manner.
Ceres provides the capex need and lends directly to a project company which has the concession to renovate the asset.
Ceres does not ask the grantor (availability based) or the operator to pay anything or take part to the financing Ceres. Ceres, will simply carve out some of the future cash flows coming from such specific asset to amortize its loan.
Benefits of the Ceres Model: Ceres’ approach provides advantages over traditional financing for lenders, borrowers and the public sector.
- It is a flexible solution (sculpts the debt amortization based on the cash flow profile of the asset to be renovated before and during operations) and matches the maturity of the loan with the duration of the concession.
- The Ceres strategy reduces annuities and in turn the financial stress of the project due to the long term and affordable nature of its financing. It also avoids the costs and risks involved with refinancing.
- The Ceres solution also ensures that the neither the public entity nor the operator have the project debt on their respective balance sheets. Ceres enables municipalities/public entities or corporations to keep their assets and renovate their infrastructure.
- Additionally, the project financing enhances returns to shareholders of the project (private equity infrastructure funds, operators, etc.).
For U.S. institutional investors, Ceres offers the ability to gain direct exposure to high quality assets and visible run-off cash flows from tangible real infrastructures by investing in this fixed income defensive asset class. Ceres enables pension funds to match their assets and liabilities, get recurring attractive yields in a current low yield environment, uncorrelated to the market, to benefit from the best in class risk/reward ratio.
For operators, Ceres enables access to larger and more numerous projects without the burden/barrier to entry based on the operator’s balance sheet or financing ability. Ceres increases the chances of bidding success rate with pre-financed bids, accelerates the bidding process, and enables realization of backlog, while enhancing returns per project.
For private equity infrastructure funds, Ceres will finance the renovation/capex of newly acquired assets hence enabling private equity funds to acquire larger assets, avoid them to invest in capex the renovation of the infrastructure and increase their IRR.
For Communities, Ceres finances infrasturucture benefit the region’s residents and economy. The renovation of core infrastructure assets produces job opportunities; strengthens the region’s economy, improves safety and liveability, provies the public with access to new and advanced technology (sensors for self-driving cars, traffic information, cameras, lighting, etc.), and enhances the safety and effectiveness of users, incudlingfirst responders (firemen, policemen, etc) without further burdening the areas taxpayers .
Ceres is a real quantifiable socially responsible impact investing (ESG) product with long-lasting effects. Ceres assists U.S. public entities in solving the infrastructure financing problem and helps offer a better service to communities, pensioners and taxpayers.