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Q&A: Why Scale Matters for Private Investors

By District Energy posted 20 days ago

  

Brookfield

Summary

The infrastructure supercycle is accelerating. With significant opportunities in energy, transport and connectivity, scale matters more than ever—driving both transformative impact and long-term value.

Q: How can scale help to build platforms?

Pollock: There’s a variety of ways to build platform value, but we believe the best opportunities can be taken advantage of by investors with scale. Identifying tuck-in acquisitions requires a broad origination business; investing in organic growth projects requires capital; assembling and deploying strong management teams means having access to a large pool of talent; and actively managing balance sheets and capital resources is more achievable for better-resourced investors. As a large-scale investor, we also benefit from strategic partnerships that we can leverage to help ensure a new platform’s success. Our work with Enwave shows the benefits of this approach.

Case Study: Building the Largest District Energy Platform in North America

In 2012, Brookfield Infrastructure acquired Enwave, a district energy system that provided heating and cooling services to customers such as hospitals, data centers, apartments, retail spaces and office buildings in two Canadian cities, Toronto and Windsor. Over the next eight years, Brookfield grew Enwave into the largest district energy system in North America, delivering power across 13 cities through a unified and professionally managed platform.

The transformation of the business involved several significant improvements. We handpicked new leadership to shift the company culture from passively responding to growth opportunities to actively pursuing sales. Then, as we continued to expand existing networks, we enhanced efficiency through centralized finance and procurement. Strong balance sheet management secured long-term, investment-grade financing, which supported growth and enhanced stability. Enwave’s EBITDA rose 20% annually, its business was de-risked and it became an attractive, stabilized platform investment. When it was time to exit, Enwave attracted large institutional investors interested in securing long-term cash flows.

In 2021, Brookfield sold Enwave in two parts—Canadian and U.S. operations—for $3 billion in aggregate.

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