ICSA to acquire US power company

Hyderabad-based ICSA Ltd, which offers electronic solutions to power companies for reducing transmission losses, is keen on acquiring a power firm in the US with an investment of $20-30 million.

ICSA was planning to acquire a power sector player with front-end marketing capabilities to tap the $16-billion power transmission and distribution infrastructure spend being planned by the US government in the coming years, said Chairman and Managing Director G Bala Reddy.

“There are many small to medium-sized companies in the US in beta, transformer and circuit manufacturing segments and in the transmission and distribution areas. Economic turmoil has brought down the valuation of some of these companies which are up for sale,” he said. The company hoped to close the deal soon as discussions were in an advanced stage with a couple of companies, he said. The acquisition would be funded through debt.

ICSA, which clocked a nine-month turnover of Rs 825 crore in 2008-09, earned only 5 per cent of its revenues from overseas markets. An entry into the US market could substantially help in increasing revenues from overseas markets.

At present, ICSA has orders worth Rs 700 crore at hand. However, the worrying factor was the delay in payment cycle, which is about 150-170 days in the power transmission industry in India.

Reddy said the company has also forayed into power generation by setting up a 20-MW wind farm in the Ananthapur district of Andhra Pradesh.

The company has forayed into the manufacturing of energy metres by acquiring Delhi-based ECE Industries. Four new products in embedded technology were brought out during the year, in addition to its various products to tackle power theft and metre tampering, he added.