Check out more SolarWakeup on Snapchat! @SolarWakeup. Another great way for us to have a conversation about solar rumors, insights and more. Follow us today! I got into the solar industry through a novel thin film product, Uni-Solar mostly due to the impact that solar could have on the roofing industry. In 2006, roofers held the key to the C&I market including residential. Nobody knew anything about warranties or how to ensure roofs would be kept up. Almost every roofer tried and got out but also almost every manufacturer made a play as well. I could list the partnership attempts down the line but if you go to the roofing expo, you will see less solar than you did in 2008. Dow exiting their solar shingle play makes me think how badly the roofing sector mistimed the entry into solar.
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Yann
These are the top 10 most read solar articles by your peers this week!
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The Top 10 is ranked by the number of SolarWakeup.com readers that clicked on the news article during the previous week. It is the poll of the most relevant solar news of the week as judged by your colleagues and competitors.
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Yann
Reading the 8-K about the Sungevity reverse merge reveals some interesting behind the scenes on the transaction. Easterly, which is known as a SPAC, was created as a public vehicle to make merge with a private company to take it public. Instead of raising money in an IPO, the cash from Easterly ends up on the Sungevity balance sheet, in this case about $190million minus costs and fees. The Sungevity shareholders, including management, will own 58.8% of the new company and the employees will end up with 1.75million shares in the options pool, about 3% of the overall company. Sungevity’s financials are also released to some extent, revealing a GAAP net income loss of $128million in 2015 with 6,159 systems installed. Net loss is always tricky in solar because the equity invested into the projects is typically booked as a loss. The company takes a dig at its competitors, SolarCity/Sunrun/Vivint, for being asset heavy and rolling their own installation crews. Curious how the previous announcements of collaboration with Sunrun and Mosaic are being handled going forward. Feel free to read more in the full presentation here.
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M&A is definitely happening in solar right now. Yesterday, Sungevity announced that it is going public through a SPAC, with Easterly Acquisitions renaming and becoming Sungevity Holdings. The company expects to go public by the end of the year. Brookfield Asset Management has taken a 25% stake of Terraform (TERP), potentially opening up new avenues for that vehicle to grow from here. Tesla hosted a conference call to go over its acquisition of SolarCity, some interesting viewpoints and quotes that came out of that.
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Yann