Case Study Sources and Uses - Intro
- 02:26
This video explores the financing needs of the windfarm.
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We're now going to start sources and uses.
The aim here is to create a source and uses table and that that source and uses table will balance. And so the idea is that you've got enough money to get the project going and then sustain it. The critical area for this is the ramp up and the CapEx. We're going to have to spend a lot of money on items, machines, turbines, getting the land ready, and there also is going to be an element of capitalization. In a bigger model, you might be capitalizing all sorts of expenses in the first couple of years to demonstrate how that would work. We're going to expense interest in latter years, but we're going to capitalize interest in initial years, and that means we're going to add it to PP&E and then let it depreciate. Capitalizing expenses is not usually allowed with normal accounting and so you won't see it in much normal company accounting, but it's relatively common in project finance, which has these ramp up and CapEx years.
We'll need to get enough money to cover the CapEx and the interest during construction, so the CapEx years. We'll also need to get enough money for this debt service reserve account. Now the debt service reserve account will be an account that we put money in, in anticipation of next year's debt service. And it's a demand that lenders often have. This will mean that there's at least one year worth of cash to cover next year's demands for the debt. And there's enough time then for things to get back on track if things take a turn for the worse.
Now, in latter years, the debt service reserve account will be covered by the operations of the business, and that's because the turbines will be turning. In former years, we will need to find that money by actually borrowing to get it.
This is one of the first major circularity in the model. We won't be able to do this for a while. We're going to get all of this cash from equity initially, so as to avoid interest. Then when we've exhausted the equity assigned to the project, we're going to borrow in the proportions, in the assumptions.