Prominent small cap investors have been talking about their infrastructure-exposed investments for 12 months, and the stats back that strategy.

A bunch of “big-ticket” public transport projects in several Australian states kept infrastructure financing trucking along in 2019, according to financial news and data provider Acuris.

Its infrastructure arm Inframation says the financial close of 126 deals in Australia last year added up to a total value of $US44.21bn ($64.6bn).

That value figure fell following a bumper year in 2018, but the number of deals is up.

As projects like the $US2.53bn stage two Sydney Metro and $US4.07bn Brisbane Cross River Rail get underway, small cap infrastructure services companies are participating in the largesse.

Acrow Formwork (ASX:ACF) has won work in the Sydney Metro.

Other companies in the space are Veris (ASX:VRS) and SRG Global (ASX:SRG), as noted by fund managers like Perennial Value Management’s Andrew Smith and billionaire investor Alex Waislitz.

SRG has secured contracts on the $3.2bn Parramatta Square redevelopment, one of the largest urban renewal projects in Australia, and in the mining sector. Veris has not identified individual projects recently.

The Inframation data showed renewables financing ran out of steam last year.

While wind and solar dominated new power projects, the number of deals struck made up 12.8 per cent of overall market activity in 2019, slightly down from the 15.7 per cent recorded a year earlier.

The number of deals was one higher in 2019 than in 2018, at 87.

Although Australia is witnessing a multi-year wind and solar investment boom, the rate at which projects are being financed has slowed.

In many regions the electricity grid has become congested and the Australian Electricity Market Operator (AEMO) has had to to freeze new projects applying to connect in some places, the Inframation report said.

Furthermore, changes to marginal loss factors (MLFs) have slowed projects gaining grid connections. The upside to this is that with fewer projects connecting, fewer existing projects have been hit with negative MLFs.

READ: These are the basic facts you need to know about the state of renewables in Australia

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