Equatorial waited out Enel's Brazilian flop, then bought Celg-D for R$1.58bn

In 2016 Brazil put Celg-D, the power distributor of Goiás state, up for auction. Equatorial Energia, a homegrown operator built around Cemar in Maranhão, joined the bidders at the IFC-structured process, alongside Energisa, CPFL, Neoenergia, Enel and AES Brasil. The minimum price was R$1.4bn for the controlling stake, but Italy's Enel won it, paying R$2.1bn.

Celg-D stayed a problem. Regulator Aneel ranked it among Brazil's worst distributors for service quality, and it failed to reach some minimum regulatory levels while serving 3.3 million customers. By 2022 Enel was in talks to sell; the largest contenders — State Grid-controlled CPFL and EDP Brasil — dropped out of the process.

Equatorial stepped in. It agreed to pay R$1.58bn (about $309M) for Celg-D, with Enel Goiás repaying roughly R$5.7bn of intercompany loans within a year of closing; Enel Americas told the SEC it would book a $990M loss. Equatorial shares surged as much as 7% that day, and analysts called the price accretive.

Equatorial paid R$1.58bn for a distributor Enel bought for R$2.1bn in 2016; shares jumped 7% on the announcement, adding 3.3M customers in a new region.

Six years of running loss-heavy distribution in poorer states gave Equatorial a fix-it playbook foreign owners lacked.

Celg-D's regulator-confirmed underperformance let the buyer set the price: 25% below what Enel paid in 2016.

Rivals CPFL and EDP walking away removed competition, leaving Equatorial as the natural home for the asset.

Structuring the deal so Enel repaid its intercompany loans kept Equatorial's own balance sheet from absorbing the legacy debt.

Regulated networks reward the operator with a working fix-it playbook. When foreign owners give up and rivals balk, the specialist can buy at the seller's pain price, not the asset's fixed potential.

The Celg-D deal set the template: Equatorial kept consolidating weak distributors while selling non-core assets. In April 2025 it agreed to sell its transmission unit — seven assets, about 2,400 km of lines — for R$9.4bn to CDPQ's platform, cutting leverage from 3.3x to a projected 2.9x and freeing capital for distribution and sanitation bets. Enel, meanwhile, kept taking write-downs as it refocused on other markets.