Ausbiz: Hajir Naghdy on Building for the Infrastructure Boom in Asia Pacific
Hajir Naghdy, Senior Managing Director and Head of Asia and the Middle East, joined Ausbiz from Sydney to discuss the evolving infrastructure investment landscape in Asia Pacific.
“The scale and pace of urbanization [in Asia Pacific] has meant wherever we look, across all of the sectors in which we invest, you’re seeing the need for new [infrastructure] investment,” he said. “On top of that, today you have these really powerful tailwinds around energy security and the need for digital infrastructure which only compound that.”
Asked about energy security specifically and the opportunities it’s creating, he added, “If you look at the big North Asian economies – countries like Japan and Korea – they import a very significant amount of their energy. So investing in a really systematic way in renewables has been a big part of their long-term plan to become more self-reliant. What’s happened over the last 12 months has really just brought more urgency to that.”
Haj also touched on how we seek to mitigate valuation risk in today’s environment. “We focus a lot on the multiple of cash flow we’re getting into these investments at,” he said. “One of the things we like a lot about building infrastructure is that you’re getting in at cost. So through the cycle, you feel good about the long-term cash flows associated with it. The risks come where you have to pay a lot of goodwill to get into the investment; creating the asset, investing in new infrastructure is a great way of mitigating that risk.”