This article is translated automatically.
Infrastructure is considered stable, plannable, contractually secured. Cash flows are contracted.
And yet part of the risk can be overlooked or at least underestimated: merchant risk. In some cases, this may be due to the fact that it sometimes wants to present itself more advantageously in the structure than it actually is economically.
The distinction is quickly formulated:
This is clear in theory, but fuzzy in practice. This is because assets can move between these poles – and the fund structure often exacerbates this fuzziness.
Examples:
The key point is that the contract stabilises cash flow. He does not produce it.
This makes the actual task clear:
After all, a seemingly stable payout profile is not necessarily an expression of low volatility if it is simply a shift in volatility. Or in other words: Sometimes you don't just buy stability, but the bag to go with it.
Once merchant risk has been identified, the question arises not only of avoidance, but also of design. Especially with newer types of infrastructure, this is where the lever lies.
Structures can be built in such a way that market volatility does not disappear –
but is transformed into a form that becomes sustainable.
For example, by:
The result is not a "contracted" investment in the narrower sense, but a deliberately designed relationship between market and contract.
A generally underestimated lever here lies in the time structure of the cash flows:
If returns occur early and more volatile earnings components are incurred later, the risk profile shifts significantly in favor of investors. The risk does not disappear then, but it is distributed differently.
