Global Infrastructure Partners and CPP Investments agreed in May 2024 to take Allete private for about $6.2 billion. Leap tags the deal as onshore wind, and the headline capacity is close to 6 GW. Underneath sit a lignite mine in North Dakota, a water company in Wisconsin and 820 MW of coal plants. The price looks different depending on which of those you count.
Key takeaways
- Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) and CPP Investments agreed on 6 May 2024 to acquire Allete, the Duluth, Minnesota power utility and renewables developer, for an enterprise value of about $6.2 billion including assumed debt.
- The offer paid about $67 per share in cash for 57,578,222 Allete shares, an equity value of $3.85 billion and a premium of about 22.1 percent to the 30-day volume weighted average share price before 4 December 2023.
- Enerdatics calculates Allete's 2023 EBITDA at $432.7 million on revenue of $1.8 billion, which puts the $6.2 billion enterprise value at about 14.3 times EBITDA and 3.4 times revenue.
- Allete's portfolio of roughly 6 GW splits into about 3 GW operational, of which 1.8 GW is wind and 1.2 GW is coal, biomass and other plants, and about 3 GW under development, mostly 2.3 GW of solar.
- The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission unanimously approved the sale of Allete to GIP and CPP Investments on 6 October 2025, and the transaction completed on 15 December 2025.
What exactly did GIP and CPP Investments buy?
They bought a holding company, not a wind developer. Allete was founded in 1906 and owns five quite different businesses, and only one of them is a pure renewables platform.
Allete Clean Energy develops, buys and runs renewable projects across North America. Its wind book totals about 1.8 GW: 1,370 MW operating, 268 MW under development and 247 MW built and transferred to other owners. It sells power to utilities such as Xcel Energy and Alliant Energy, and to corporate buyers including Walmart, McDonald's and Starbucks.
Minnesota Power is the regulated utility. It serves 150,000 residents, 14 municipalities and several large industrial customers. Half of its operating fleet is renewable: 522 MW of wind, 120 MW of hydro, a 10 MW solar plant and a 158 MW biomass centre. The other half is coal, with 820 MW of coal-fired capacity.
New Energy Equity builds distributed solar. It runs 250 projects totalling more than 425 MW and holds a pipeline of about 2,000 MW. BNI Energy operates BNI Coal, a lignite mine near Center, North Dakota, which supplies two generating cooperatives at the Milton R. Young station. Superior Water, Light and Power sells electricity, natural gas and water to customers in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Why does the $1.03 million per MW figure mislead here?
Because it divides the enterprise value by everything Allete owns or plans, whether it runs or not. Leap's structured value per MW for this deal is $1.03 million, measured across 5,998 MW. About half of that capacity is development pipeline, and two fifths of the operating half is coal, biomass and other plants.
A per MW figure is useful when a buyer pays for a defined set of generating assets. It works poorly for a company that also earns money from distribution customers, water sales and a mine. Those businesses carry revenue and earnings but little or no generating capacity, so they inflate the numerator without adding to the denominator.
That is why corporate takeovers are better compared on earnings. Enerdatics' own benchmark tool excludes corporate deals from its per MW statistics for the same reason, and measures them on EBITDA and revenue multiples instead. EBITDA is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, a rough proxy for the cash a business generates before financing costs.
How does the price look on earnings instead of capacity?
It looks reasonable on EBITDA and cheap on revenue, and the gap between the two is the interesting part. The 14.3 times EBITDA figure sits above what most US corporate deals have printed. The 3.4 times revenue figure sits near the bottom of the range.
The two multiples diverge because of margins. Allete turned $1.8 billion of revenue into $432.7 million of EBITDA in 2023, a margin of about 24 percent. A pure renewables platform with long-term contracts would usually convert far more of its revenue into EBITDA, because it has no fuel bill and few retail customers. Allete's utility, gas and water operations bring in revenue that does not translate into earnings at the same rate.
The deal also leaned heavily on debt. Of the $6.2 billion, $3.85 billion was equity. Enerdatics understands the net debt to be about $2.35 billion, with about $71.9 million of cash, giving total debt of roughly $2.4 billion. The original version of this post put the revenue multiple at 3.3 times; Leap's enterprise value and revenue figures give 3.4 times.
Enerdatics records 165 US corporate transactions announced between 2023 and 2025, and only 14 of them carry a disclosed EBITDA multiple. Their median is 11.13 times, with the middle half falling between 7.42 and 21.66 times. Allete at about 14.3 times sits above the median but well inside that band. On revenue, the same 14 deals have a median of 6.74 times and a lower quartile of 3.03 times, so Allete's 3.4 times is near the cheap end.
What does the deal signal for US utility M&A?
The first signal is about time. When the deal was announced, closing was expected in mid-2025 after shareholder and regulatory approvals. The Minnesota commission approved it in October 2025 and the deal completed in December 2025, about 19 months after signing. Buyers of regulated utilities price in a long approval path, and here it ran longer than planned.
The second signal is about what infrastructure funds are willing to own. Minnesota Power aims to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2035 and reach more than 70 percent renewable energy by 2030. Its plan includes up to 400 MW of new wind, 300 MW of new solar and significant investment in storage. Allete as a whole planned to invest about $3.3 billion in renewables and transmission by 2027. Private owners are taking on that capital programme along with the coal assets it is meant to replace.
The third signal is that utility takeovers do not price like renewables portfolio sales. Investors comparing this deal with a wind portfolio on a per MW basis would conclude it was cheap. Compared on earnings with other US corporate deals, it was neither cheap nor stretched. The EBITDA comparison with Energy Capital Partners' $7.5 billion Atlantica deal, agreed the same month, and with bp's Lightsource bp buyout shows how widely billion-dollar platform multiples can vary.
Frequently asked questions
Who advised on the Allete takeover? J.P. Morgan Securities and Houlihan Lokey Capital were financial advisers to Allete, with Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom as its legal adviser. Latham and Watkins and Kirkland and Ellis advised GIP and CPP Investments.
Does Allete still trade on the stock market? No. On completion Allete's shares stopped trading on the New York Stock Exchange and the company became privately owned by GIP and CPP Investments.
How much of Allete's capacity was operating at the time of the deal? About 3 GW of Allete's roughly 6 GW was operational, made up of 1.8 GW of wind and 1.2 GW of coal, biomass and other plants. The remaining 3 GW was under development, including 2.3 GW of solar and 700 MW of wind.
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