A large foreign multinational corporation (the Company) invests in power plants and renewable energy ventures in addition to its businesses in the manufacturing, trading, and financial services. The Company had recently invested in a U.S.-based wind powered electricity generation facility (the windfarm). To finance this project, the Company had executed a series of contracts to forward sell 100% of the power generated from the windfarm, along with all its environmental attributes. These agreements included several physical fixed-price sales contracts for a portion of the offtake along with a contract for differences, which contained a cap on the cumulative payout related to several agreements. The complex agreements spanned over 20 years and contained an option to extend the agreement for an additional five years. Given the complicated nature of these structured power agreements, the Company engaged Opportune for assistance with their accounting treatment, including analyzing them for derivatives and implementing cash flow hedge accounting where applicable. If the contracts were derivatives, the default accounting treatment would be to record the fair value of these contracts on their balance sheet each reporting period with all changes in their fair value recognized currently in earnings, thereby increasing the Company’s earnings volatility. Cash flow hedge accounting treatment would allow the Company to defer the effective portion of the changes in fair value in other comprehensive income until the underlying power transaction impacted earnings.
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A large foreign multinational corporation (the Company) invests in power plants and renewable energy ventures in addition to its businesses in the manufacturing, trading, and financial services. The Company had recently invested in a U.S.-based wind powered electricity generation facility (the windfarm). To finance this project, the Company had executed a series of contracts to forward sell 100% of the power generated from the windfarm, along with all its environmental attributes. These agreements included several physical fixed-price sales contracts for a portion of the offtake along with a contract for differences, which contained a cap on the cumulative payout related to several agreements. The complex agreements spanned over 20 years and contained an option to extend the agreement for an additional five years. Given the complicated nature of these structured power agreements, the Company engaged Opportune for assistance with their accounting treatment, including analyzing them for derivatives and implementing cash flow hedge accounting where applicable. If the contracts were derivatives, the default accounting treatment would be to record the fair value of these contracts on their balance sheet each reporting period with all changes in their fair value recognized currently in earnings, thereby increasing the Company’s earnings volatility. Cash flow hedge accounting treatment would allow the Company to defer the effective portion of the changes in fair value in other comprehensive income until the underlying power transaction impacted earnings.