It’s Tracker Day. FTC Solar has successfully gone public, joining the public markets and trading under the ticker FTCI. The original price target was $19 per share but the sale actually happened at $13 per share. The company raised a little over $130mm for the company balance sheet and some more shares were sold as a synthetic secondary. The stock did trade up to almost $15 by the end of the trading day, still representing a 7x revenue market cap.
What’s Next? You’ve been reading about it here for months and it finally happened, Nextracker, the global leader in single axis trackers, has filed for their IPO. The S-1 is still confidential but expect to see revenues well north of $1bb and margins comparable to Array Technologies. This would be the fourth tracker IPO in less than 12 months and bring the largest to the market. Nextracker is led by solar industry vets Dan Sugar and Bruce Ledesma which makes me want to be a bystander on the road show. Currently the company is wholly owned by Flex. As a side note, it is entirely possible that Nextracker valuation exceeds today’s market cap of Flex which was ~$9bb.
Clean Supply Chains. SEIA is stepping up to help the market ensure clean supply chains as it pertains to the Xinjiang forced labor reports. The Solar Supply Chain Traceability Protocol is a set of guidelines designed to help solar companies meet compliance obligations and, importantly, provide customers with assurances that their solar products are free of unethical labor practices. On April 30 at 1:00PM ET, SEIA will host a webinar to discuss the new resources and explain how solar companies can put them into practice.
Power Up, EPCs. And come ready to learn! The Business PowerSeries from EagleView - moderated by yours truly - has an upcoming webinar on scalability. Remember what happened when Icarus flew too close to the sun? This session will show you how to avoid any sinking missteps and instead scale your business using sustainable strategies. I’ll be joined by JP Gerken, CEO of Zenernet and solar selling extraordinaire. He’ll talk about what it takes to turn a business into one of the largest residential solar companies in the country. Sign up now to save your spot for May 12th!
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Yann
More Tomorrow. I don’t know about you but I’m busier than ever. You all should feel free to pitch in by sending me a paragraph to be included in the newsletter. Don’t pitch your book, if you’re going to get onto the newsletter, make the content valuable, have an opinion and make a point.
Power Up, EPCs. And come ready to learn! The Business PowerSeries from EagleView - moderated by yours truly - has an upcoming webinar on scalability. Remember what happened when Icarus flew too close to the sun? This session will show you how to avoid any sinking missteps and instead scale your business using sustainable strategies. I’ll be joined by JP Gerken, CEO of Zenernet and solar selling extraordinaire. He’ll talk about what it takes to turn a business into one of the largest residential solar companies in the country. Sign up now to save your spot for May 12th!
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Bipartisan Energy Policy? I had missed this message from Kevin McCarthy, the GOP leader in the House and host to the most solar by district. Is this politics or a real change in policy?
Going Full Stack. BP is registering to become an energy retailer. The oil major has long been in the energy wholesale markets, often working behind the scenes for dozens of energy retailers across the country. In deregulated markets retailers are the customer facing sales and marketing companies while the trading desks, which need massive balance sheets, often look more like BP. Part of this could be the upcoming shift in transportation from fuel to electricity. The electrification of fleets and consumer cars means that BP can’t give up their revenue to other retailers or utilities. By being a retailer, you could see BP offering fleet financing, onsite charging infrastructure and the energy package to go with it. If you think this is too far into the future? Oil traders are already financing fleet electrification across the globe.
Clean Goals, Clean Peaks. The RPS policy has gained steam across the Country and Biden is talking about it as well. With all this talk about 24/7 renewable energy, look for another headline to take over, the clean peak standard. This is an RPS that matches renewables with the highest peak of energy consumption so as efficiency and distributed energy lowers demand, the clean energy production needs to match the new peaks. Get your energizer bunnies ready!
Power Up, EPCs. And come ready to learn! The Business PowerSeries from EagleView - moderated by yours truly - has an upcoming webinar on scalability. Remember what happened when Icarus flew too close to the sun? This session will show you how to avoid any sinking missteps and instead scale your business using sustainable strategies. I’ll be joined by JP Gerken, CEO of Zenernet and solar selling extraordinaire. He’ll talk about what it takes to turn a business into one of the largest residential solar companies in the country. Sign up now to save your spot for May 12th!
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It Was Climate Week. The week ended with the climate summit and a plethora of policy statements by Biden which most likely drowned out any global statements by other Countries. Let's take a look at what this decade long sprint to a better planet and cleaner economy would create.
Kerry Bets The Markets. Underneath all of the headlines is the Biden approach to climate policy, taking the whole of government approach. It is also expected that a quarter of the upcoming state of the union speech will be about climate change and creating jobs in the clean energy economy. Kerry is taking an approach of using diplomacy with investors as well. He rightfully realizes that trillions of dollars will be coming from the private markets to fill the gap left by government funding.
Bad Politics? Fox is already beating the drum on Biden and obviously on the recently filed Green New Deal. The question that comes up is whether Biden leaning in on the policy is hurting democrats chances in the mid terms. Polling shows that support for the spending and policy initiatives is bipartisan, but Fox News is isolating the requirement (fakely) that you will only be allowed to eat 4 pounds of meat per year.
A Climate Corps. A second bill filed by AOC and Markey is a federal climate corps with 1.5million workers to focus on the implementation of the steep climb ahead for us.
Power Up, EPCs. And come ready to learn! The Business PowerSeries from EagleView - moderated by yours truly - has an upcoming webinar on scalability. Remember what happened when Icarus flew too close to the sun? This session will show you how to avoid any sinking missteps and instead scale your business using sustainable strategies. I’ll be joined by JP Gerken, CEO of Zenernet and solar selling extraordinaire. He’ll talk about what it takes to turn a business into one of the largest residential solar companies in the country. Sign up now to save your spot for May 12th!
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Yann