Offtaking agreements and how they impact the cost of funding for project finance deals: A clinical case study of the Quezon Power Ltd Co.

Offtaking agreements are an important risk transfer mechanism in project finance. However, they can also be thought of as a trade-off between lower market and higher counterparty risks. We use the case of the Quezon Power Ltd Co. to test the effect of higher counterparty risk on the cost of funding. Results indicate that the spread of Quezon's bond and counterparty risk are positively correlated when risk is represented by the daily volatility of the offtaker's stock returns. We also find an inverse relation between the rating upgrades of the offtaker and the spread paid by Quezon Power.