Hydro One announces share issue hours after critical report released

Just hours after the release of areport thatwarns the partialsale of Hydro One will have a negative impact on Ontario'sbudget balance, the utilityannounced Thursdayit's putting millions of its shareson financial markets.

In a written statement, Hydro One says it will issuemore than 81 million shares next Thursday at $20.50 a share.

"The offering is being made through a syndicate of underwriters led by RBC Capital Markets and Scotiabank," the statement said.

"The Toronto Stock Exchange ...has conditionally approved the listing of the common shares of the company subject to fulfilling customary TSX requirements."

The announcementcomes on the same day Ontario's new financial accountability officer, Stephen LeClair, released his first report to the provincial legislature.

LeClairsaysthe province would see an improvement in its budget in the first year after an initial sale of 15 per cent of shares in Hydro One.

• ANALYSIS |Hydro One: 6 reasons why the sale is going to happen

But he says the budgetary impact could be positive or negative in subsequent years as more shares are sold, and will ultimately be negative once the Liberals sell the 60 per cent of Hydro One they plan to put on the market.

LeClairestimates the total value of Hydro One at between $11-billion and $14.3 billion, and says based on that a 60 per cent sale would generate $6.8 billion to $8.9 billion, "a wider and somewhat lower range" than the government's estimates.

But the financial accountability officer says he can't tell how the government came up with its valuations for Hydro One because the Liberals won't tell him their methodology.

Without knowing how they made their calculations,LeClairsays "it is not possible" for him to offer a definitive opinionon whether the partial sale will help the government eliminate a $10.3 billion deficit by 2017-18 as promised or not.

Hydro One turns over about $750 million a year to the province, which will be reduced as private owners take their share of the profits.

'Right way to go' vs 'insane'

But Premier KathleenWynnesays she needs to sell 60 per cent of the utility to raise money for public transit and infrastructure projects.

"In terms of the long term, we thought this was the right way togo," Wynne said Thursday at an unrelated event in
Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. "The other factor is that the benefit,the economic benefit of the investments we're going to make, I'mconvinced that they will outweigh that long-term change in therevenue."

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath called the sale "ludicrous" and"insane," and said LeClair's report shows the government will getonly a fraction of the money it was expecting.

Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown said after thegovernment puts $5 billion from the sale to pay down hydro debt, itwill be left with a lot less than it expected to raise for transitand infrastructure.

"It makes no sense to sell an asset that will only net $1.4billion while you lose an asset that brings in $700 million each andevery year," he said.