Concord New Energy to sell S$158.2 million in assets to Industrial Bank Financial Leasing
In this sell-and-leaseback deal, a CNE unit will lease the assets back for a period of 14 years
[SINGAPORE] Clean-power developer Concord New Energy (CNE) has entered into an 840 million yuan (S$158.2 million) arrangement with Industrial Bank Financial Leasing to refinance the leases on its equipment and facilities for its energy-storage projects in China.
Industrial Bank Financial Leasing is the wholly owned financial leasing arm of China’s Industrial Bank. CNE, headquartered in Singapore, is a 20-year-old company that develops, owns and operates wind, solar and energy-storage assets globally.
Under the agreement announced on Friday (May 29) in a bourse filing on both the Hong Kong Exchange and Singapore Exchange, Industrial Bank Financial Leasing will buy certain equipment and facilities from CNE’s wholly owned subsidiary, Fengning Manchu Autonomous County Juting New Energy Development Co, for that sum, and then lease the assets back to Fengning for 14 years.
The arrangement, commonly known as a sale-and-leaseback deal, enables a company to sell its assets to raise cash while continuing to use them for its operations by paying lease instalments on them.
CNE said the transaction qualifies as a major transaction under Chapter 14 of the Hong Kong Listing Rules, so shareholder approval will be required for it.
Lease payments will be made quarterly, with interest charged at a floating rate of 0.25 percentage points below the prevailing market lending rate.
Based on current assumptions, total payments over the 14-year lease period are expected to amount to about 1.04 billion yuan.
CNE said the leased assets, previously acquired and built by independent third parties, are used in photovoltaic energy-storage power station projects in China.
In March, the company reported that its full-year profits for the financial year ended Dec 31, 2025 had tumbled by more than 80 per cent to 139.7 million yuan (S$25.9 million) from 805.1 million yuan.
CNE is now seeking fresh growth in the artificial intelligence (AI) space, having secured new projects in the Asia-Pacific and the US.
In April, the company secured approval for 1 gigawatt (GW) of grid power capacity in Texas, one of the world’s fastest-growing data centre markets. The approved capacity will complement one of its solar power and battery projects in the state, paving the way for it to supply power to hyperscale data centres.
CNE also inked an agreement in March with hyperscale player Bridge Data Centres to explore developing Singapore’s first hydrogen power solution on a floating barge designed for AI infrastructure.
The company has been listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 2007; in early 2026, it debuted on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) in a secondary listing. It moved its headquarters from Hong Kong to Singapore in 2023, and has more than 5GW in renewable energy projects globally.
CNE vice-president Mike Luo previously told The Business Times in an interview that investors should view the company as operating at the intersection of artificial intelligence and the physical world.
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