GEOMETRIC: BEWARE OF THE IDES OF MARCH

· Otoabasi Akpantah argues that Geometric Power costs are excessive

· Julius Caesar was killed by his hitherto praise singers and “supporters” including his bosom friend Marcus Junius Brutus. He was stabbed by 60 conspirators and killed at the base of the statue of Pompey the Great in the Roman Senate House in March 44 BC.

· On March 10, 2022, one of the national dailies published an article written by one Emeka Umegbala for, and on behalf of, himself and some members of a certain International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law titled “Time to Collapse EEDC” – an acronym for Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (Enugu Disco).

· In the article, the writer disclosed that his group has kicked off sustained campaign for the purpose of collapsing the activities of EEDC for its takeover by Geometric Power, which by his account has spent over $500 million in building four new injection substations, over 140km of high voltage distribution lines, 141 megawatts power plant and 27km of gas pipeline. The article also disclosed that AfriExim bank granted further facility of $50 million to Geometric from which it used $26 million for the acquisition of EEDC’s Aba and Ariaria Business Districts while the balance $24 million will be used to improve the existing infrastructure and expansion of the Aba – Ariaria network.

· If the numbers reeled out here are correct, and I do not have any cause to doubt them since Prof Barth Nnaji (former Power Minister and Promoter of Geometric Power) himself and Geometric Power have in different fora and press statements given out the same numbers from which the writer must have derived his data.

· It is on the basis of the quoted figures that this red flag is being raised because indeed the numbers do not add up.

· Investing a whopping $550 million just to service two business districts that represent barely 10% of the entire EEDC network, valued at $230 million, does not make any business sense. Building 141 megawatt power plant to service two business districts with peak load of barely 40 megawatts is grossly over scoped, inefficient and a recipe for disaster. This is even more worrisome especially considering that the 1,020 megawatt Alaoji NIPP, located in the same precinct as the Geometric power plant, already has stranded 800 megawatts capacity that cannot be evacuated into the grid by TCN because of its poor infrastructure. In other words, 100 megawatts of Geometric power plant cannot be activated nor utilized despite the huge capital already expended.

· Using standard industry estimates, a 141-megawatt power plant, at $1 million/mw, should cost about $141 million; 27km of gas pipeline, at $1 million/km, should cost about $27 million; 140km of HV lines at $30,000/km should cost $4.2 million; while the four substations should cost no more than $4 million at the average cost of $1 million each bringing the total cost to $176.2 million. Allowing additional costs to cater for consultancy and ancillary costs, a cost profile of $200 million for the entire project would have been quite adequate. Thus spending $500 million on a $200 million project does not indicate prudent assessment of costs and management of resources.

· The second and probably more pertinent issue is how will Geometric manage this highly geared financial exposure. Assuming that its promoters contributed 30% equity to the $500 million capital expenditure, and financed $350 million over a standard seven year period at about 10% interest per annum, the debt service will amount to $5.8 million per month or $69.7 million per year. These translate to about N2.4 billion per month or N28.9 billion per year assuming an exchange rate of N415 to a dollar. Interest alone amounts to $2.9 million or N1.2 billion per month. Expectedly, Geometric will need about N2.4 billion every month just to service its debt. There is no way Geometric will be able to net up to N1 billion a month after offsetting its Opex costs including the invoice of the gas supplier, payroll, operations and logistics. So how will Geometric service its facility and have return on its investment?

· Compare the above scenarios to EEDC in which the investors paid $126 million for the entire network including the Aba-Ariaria business districts from which it has gotten back $26 million from Geometric.

· From the foregoing, it is obvious that the authors of the said Nigeria Pilot article do not understand the intricacies of business costs and financing, otherwise they would not have recommended a highly geared entity with attendant risk of threat of business continuity to take over the business of a lesser geared and more prudent but perhaps less efficient entity; although Geometric’s operational efficiency is yet to be tested in the field.

· The situation indeed calls to question the prudence and management competency of the Geometric team. Spending $500 million for a $200 million project is, at the least, scandalous.

· Installing upfront a 141 megawatt power plant for a network that can only offtake less than a third of that capacity also questions Geometric’s understanding of the business they are going into; a 45 megawatt plant, scalable to 141 megawatts as load demand increases, would have been more prudent. It is akin to buying three aircraft of 120 passenger capacities to deploy on a route that has passenger volume of 100 passengers. You will have to either ground two of the aircraft indefinitely with attendant costs or use the three interchangeably, also with the attendant costs, when you could have deployed only one aircraft initially, and as passenger volume increases you deploy more aircraft.

· Ideally, the whole Geometric development could have been done with less than $100 million — $45 million for 45mw power plant, $27 million for the 27km gas pipeline and $8.2 million for the injection substations and 140km HV lines; and yet achieve the same cash flow results.

· An informed protagonist would have rather advised Geometric to court EEDC to off take the excess 100 megawatts, which is probably its only life line to remain at least on life support, as that will improve its cash flows while it seeks other ways of managing its humongous debt profile which may come crashing on it and inevitably consume it sooner than later.

· With the right collaboration and support from EEDC, both parties may strike a good symbiotic relationship that will benefit each other and ultimately the customers. There is a saying in Igbo land that it is the man who holds a mould of eba that goes seeking the man with a bowl of soup because the man with soup could eat his soup and relieve his hunger but the man with the eba will be stuck with his eba as he cannot swallow it without soup. However, if they both team up, they would each have a sumptuous meal.

· Setting up a party with egg shell skull for a head butt combat with a “Mutiu Adepoju” (then Super Eagles “Headmaster”) can only end in tragedy.

· History is replete with the Julius Caesar experience. It is the same cheer leaders that are singing the praises and eulogizing Geometric, that will put the knife to its heart when the cookies crumble.

· Geometric should beware of the Ides of March.

· Akpantah is a Chartered Accountant and management consultant