International Power: minorities turn off Complicated? Moi? A year after its reverse takeover by GDF Suez, International Power is still something of an enigma. Its heavy exposure to countries such as Brazil and Turkey makes the power generation company look an ideal proxy for turbocharged emerging markets. But its complex holding-company-like structure - it does not own 100 per cent of some of its most valuable assets, and is now in turn 70 per cent owned by the French utility - distracts from its earnings visibility. Wednesday's 2011 results demonstrated all of International Power's strengths and weaknesses. The London-listed group not only generates electricity - it also generates bags of cash. Free cash flow amounted to €2.7bn on revenues of €16.5bn, plenty to allow it to pay a generous dividend (at a pay-out ratio of 40 per cent) and to invest in growth. This is increasingly biased towards emerging markets - it gets about a quarter of revenues from Latin America. Much of its output in emerging markets is contracted to state distribution companies, which adds to the predictability of earnings. The downside is that International Power owns only 50.1 per cent of the Jirau project in Brazil, for example, which represents about 30 per cent of the generation capacity that the group has under construction. That limits the downside and the upside: its suggestion that falling power prices in Brazil would affect 2013 earnings knocked 4 per cent from its share price after the results. And with a third of its earnings per share originating in developed markets such as the UK and North America, International Power still has plenty of exposure to less profitable, deregulated electricity markets. A perennial question from now on will be whether GDF Suez buys out minorities. Its €15bn stake is about 30 per cent of its own value; GDF Suez chief executive Gérard Mestrallet plans a big push into Asia. He does not need any more of International Power to pull that off.