By: Nicholas Sakelaris |
Oncor’s auction reaches another milestone at midnight Monday with the second round of bidding coming to an end.
The largest utility company in Texas is up for grabs because its parent company, Energy Future Holdings, is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy court. As a regulated utility with a monopoly within its service area, Oncor had ring-fence protections from the restructuring.
The auction will be for the 80 percent of Oncor that EFH owns.
The bidding has been confidential so far, with the first round occurring in March.
From those bids, a stalking horse bid will be determined for the public auction that starts in June. The auction is expected to be completed by August.
Dallas-based EFH filed for bankruptcy a year ago with more than $40 billion in debt on the books. The power giant was created in 2007 when private equity companies forced a leveraged buyout of Oncor, TXU Energy and Luminant.
While we don’t know who is bidding, we know that companies such as NextEra Energy, Hunt Consolidated and CenterPoint Energy have all shown interest in Oncor.
Oncor grew its residential customer base by 1.5 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the same period in 2013.
And the company’s adjusted net income totaled $436 million for 2014, up 7.4 percent from 2013.
