At the fag end of Wall Street’s SPAC fever last year, ReNew Energy became the first major Indian company to go public through the much-debated listing procedure. The merger with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) had smoothened out its public market entry and helped it notch a cool $3.2 billion valuation. But the renewable energy firm’s unusual listing process (at least in the Indian context) has been dwarfed by the attention it has received for its recent, and sometimes unusual, actions. The company has, in rapid succession, entered and divested from different projects, all the while increasing its overall capacity by a fifth. The strangest move of the lot has been the $250 million share buyback that came less than half a year from its listing as it tried to fight a fall in its share price amidst a broader market turndown. The firm’s actions are now clearly (and sometimes heavily) impacted by its public market reputation and the standing of its scrips. But Wall Street sentiment is only one of the many balls that ReNew now has to juggle. The company’s current valuation is already lower than that of behemoth Tata Power’s unlisted renewables arm—$4.4 billion—even though ReNew has a higher clean energy capacity. ReNew is now moving to diversify its offerings—through investments in green hydrogen, energy storage, and the provisioning of power directly to corporate entities. It has gone from just being an inspirational exit story to a case study of the dynamics that firms face post listing.
