SINGAPORE - Singapore's Keppel Corp said on Wednesday it would transform itself into an asset manager focusing on green energy in its biggest ever restructuring, betting it would provide more stable revenue streams and earnings resilience.
The plan marks a new chapter for Keppel, which traces its roots to a small ship repair yard corporatised in 1968. It sold its core offshore and marine business to local peer Semcorp Marine for S$4.5 billion ($3.3 billion) earlier this year.
"This latest restructuring reflects a fundamental shift in how we organise ourselves to operate in a nimbler manner and harness technology to grow at speed and scale. It includes relooking at how Keppel is organised," Keppel CEO Loh Chin Hua said in a statement.
The conglomerate with an $8.5 billion market value, which has operations ranging from data centres to renewable energy assets, will be divided into fund management, investment, and operating platforms under the restructuring.
"Keppel has a strong track record in the development and operation of real assets, such as renewables, clean energy, decarbonisation and environmental management solutions, green buildings as well as digital connectivity infrastructure," said Loh, who has been at the helm since 2014.
A growing pool of investors including sovereign wealth funds and pension funds are interested in allocating more capital to alternative assets, he added. "With our strong capabilities in these areas... we can play to our strengths."
Keppel plans to significantly increase its assets under management (AUM) to S$200 billion by 2030, with an interim target of achieving S$100 billion worth of AUM by 2026-end, double of what it had at the end of last year.
The company said the shake-up could result in annual savings of between S$60 million and S$70 million by 2026, including from centralising support functions.
The firm is now targeting between S$10 billion to S$12 billion in cumulative asset monetisation by 2026-end. It has already achieved asset monetisation of S$4.9 billion as at end of first-quarter of fiscal 2023 since the program was launched in late 2020.
Shares in Keppel traded up 0.3% on Wednesday and are 32.5% higher since the start of the year, boosted by simplifying its business, mainly through asset sales.
($1 = 1.3340 Singapore dollars)
(Reporting by Sameer Manekar in Bengaluru and Yantoultra Ngui in Singapore; Editing by Uttaresh Venkateshwaran and Jamie Freed)
