A new timetable is out for the year's biggest initial public offering contender, Alinta Energy.
As revealed by Street Talk on Tuesday, Alinta's private equity and hedge fund owners want a prospectus lodged in mid-March and the company listed by mid April.
The timetable has Alinta management back in front of fund managers in early March.
It is understood Alinta and its raft of banks issued a revised timeline to the broader working group this week. Formal joint lead manager meetings are set to get under way next Monday in Sydney and Melbourne, and due diligence committees will also resume following a three-month hiatus.
While Alinta is fresh in investors' minds - remember the company started formal float marketing last year before the deal was postponed in November - analyst and investors' focus is expected to shift to 2018 financial year numbers this time around.
That means Alinta, its owners headed by Joel Thickins-run private equity giant TPG, its brokers and lawyers need to forecast numbers out another 12 months.
Assuming that's still the case, it means EBITDA just north of $400 million for the FY18 valuation period.
Alinta is well known in the local utilities investor community, having been snapped up and sold numerous times over the past 15 years. It's expected to come to market with plenty of free cashflow to put into growth initiatives and/or for dividends.
The utility is a household name in Western Australia and also owns a collection of power infrastructure assets. It's expected to be worth about $3 billion, including debt.
There is also $7.4 billion coming out of the utilities sector, should DUET Group be snapped up in May as scheduled. With DUET gone from the boards, Alinta would be one of the highest yielding utilities stocks on the ASX.
Alinta's adviser line-up is unchanged for its second attempt at the ASX boards. Lazard is independent adviser, while Goldman Sachs, Macquarie Capital and UBS are global coordinators, and Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley are joint lead managers.
