Duluth electric utility owner Allete to go private after $6.2 billion sale

Canada’s pension board and a large investment fund have agreed to buy Duluth-based energy company Allete, whose electric utility supplies power to a swath of northeastern Minnesota homes and the region’s large industrial customers.

The $6.2 billion deal for $67 per share would be an enormous change for Allete and Minnesota, shifting it to a private company in the hands of massive investment firms out of state, should the sale close next year.

The transaction would still need shareholders’ and regulators’ approval, including that of the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC). Some are already raising transparency concerns about a private company owning a public utility, a potential topic of debate at an upcoming PUC meeting Thursday.

But CEO Bethany Owen described the buyers as “investors, not operators” who are committed to Minnesota, would keep the headquarters in Duluth, retain the existing leadership team and promise to keep a big workforce intact.

“What this partnership brings is this ready access to capital,” Owen said Monday.

That capital is crucial for Allete’s plans to spend big on the clean-energy transition away from fossil fuels. Its electric utility Minnesota Power, for example, must hit Minnesota’s carbon-free mandate by 2040. The company also owns a clean-energy developer.

Owen said Allete is looking at raising about $4.3 billion in the next five years for energy generation and infrastructure like transmission lines, which is enormous when compared to the company’s roughly $3.4 billion market value. Instead of issuing equity in the public markets, Allete can lean on its new owners.

“We’re looking at doubling the size of Allete over the next five years,” Owen said. “That is not impossible [as a public company,] but it’s a little more challenging to do when public markets are as volatile as they have been.”

The Canada Pension Plan (CPP) Investment Board manages retirement funds for more than 22 million Canadians and has more than $590 billion in assets in Canadian dollars. Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), the investment fund, manages $112 billion and focuses on infrastructure sectors including energy, transportation and water services. The mega asset management company BlackRock has plans to buy GIP, though that deal is not final yet either.

Owen said the buyers would help with more than raising money.

“They are very large entities with lots of deep experience and can help on things like supply chain,” she said.

Still, there are skeptics of that justification. Chris Ellinghaus, a utilities analyst for Siebert Williams Shank, said Monday he doesn’t agree raising capital would be so difficult. He said Allete has a strong balance sheet, and conditions would be “satisfactory if not favorable” for the company.

“The conditions that Allete is describing are not unique to them,” Ellinghaus said. “So unless the whole sector is going to implode, I don’t really fear for the industry being able to raise that kind of capital.”

Allete’s stock was down nearly 2% at $63.01 after market close Monday.

Minnesota Power serves 150,000 residential and commercial customers across northeast Minnesota, selling a majority of its electricity to commercial endeavors like taconite mines and paper mills that are critical to the regional economy. Minnesota Power would continue as an independently operated, state-regulated utility, and Allete said the sale should not affect electric rates.

Minnesota Power also owns a 20% stake in — and would build and operate — the controversial Nemadji Trail Energy Center, a proposed $1 billion gas-fired power plant in Superior, Wis.

Duluth Mayor Roger Reinert declined to comment, but the commitment to keep local headquarters and other workforce pledges eased concerns for Matt Baumgartner, president of the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce. Owen said there would be no layoffs as a result of the transaction, and the buyers promised to honor union agreements.

“Minnesota Power and Allete are so important to the Duluth area and our region,” he said, adding while the chamber will monitor the situation, “it’s as good of news as we could hope for at this point.”

Allete has roughly 1,500 employees, including 1,140 in Minnesota. Allete also owns several other companies, including the clean-energy developer, coal miner BNI Energy in North Dakota and Superior Water, Light and Power in Wisconsin.

Baumgartner said the region has benefited from Allete’s own acquisitions in recent years, and he sees how the move would make sense financially as the company moves toward its clean-energy goals.

Ellinghaus said there haven’t been a lot of takeovers in Minnesota, so the process will be interesting to watch. He said the outcome might depend on how much public advocates want to fight it or on politics about foreign ownership or Wall Street funds.

One group is already raising concerns. Tyson Slocum, energy program director with the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said publicly traded companies must disclose an “enormous amounts of financial detail” and other information that is “all going to be lost if [Allete] goes private.”

“It tells you what kind of relationship the holding company has with the utility,” he said. “It becomes very difficult for state regulators to continue to track certain relationships between the utility and the holding company when it goes private.”

Slocum urged the PUC to “really take a hard look” at the deal, and to hold hearings on the issue.

“This is a very big deal,” he said. “It’s sort of a new thing for Minnesota.”