By America Hernandez
(Reuters) -TotalEnergies will raise $950 million from the sale of a stake in a U.S. solar portfolio, it said, as the company seeks to soothe investor fears over slow asset sales and rising debt that are likely to be in focus at an Investor Day in New York on Monday.
As other energy majors reduce renewables spending, Total has bucked the trend by continuing to build wind and solar projects, then selling minority stakes to raise cash that it invests in natural gas assets to grow its portfolio as global demand rises.
Under the solar deal, investment company KKR will take 50% of six utility-scale solar assets and 41 distributed generation assets, mostly in the United States. Total will keep the remaining half of the 1.4-gigawatt portfolio, with an enterprise value of $1.25 billion.
DEBT HAS MORE THAN DOUBLED
CEO Patrick Pouyanne has said the sale is one of several meant to bring in $3.5 billion by year-end, to offset more than $3 billion in acquisitions that have contributed to a more than doubling of Total’s debt in the first six months of 2025.
The French major also announced on Monday it would purchase a 49% stake in Continental Resources’ upstream gas fields in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, for an undisclosed sum.
STRUGGLING ASSET SALES
Last week TotalEnergies sold an oilfield stake to Shell for $510 million, but two other deals are in jeopardy.
An $860 million divestment of Nigerian oil assets fell through last week as buyer Chappal Energies failed to raise enough money.
In July, the sale of Total’s West of Shetland gas assets in Britain for an undisclosed sum also fell apart, after would-be buyer Prax Group went bankrupt.
Total’s gearing – a measure of net debt to equity – has leapt to 18% from about 8% in the first six months of this year. That figure rises to 28% when including $8.9 billion in leases and 9.75 billion euros ($11.37 billion) of hybrid debt. Quarterly earnings hit a four-year-low this summer.
Last week the board of directors announced a 25% cut to its buyback in the fourth quarter, with potentially deeper cuts next year, citing the need to lower debt levels in case oil prices fall further.
Brent crude is trading below $70 per barrel, a 40% drop since 2022 when Total initiated its $8 billion annual buyback scheme.
(Reporting by Alessandro Parodi in Gdasnk, America Hernandez in Paris and Shadia Nasralla in London; Editing by Matt Scuffham and Barbara Lewis)
