This is your SolarWakeup for July 13th, 2016

First full day of Intersolar here in San Francisco. A decent crowd, bigger than I thought would show so great job to the hosts. I have not had the chance to walk the floor yet so wait one more day to get my take on that. The mood is optimistic and upbeat about our sector even with some of the market headwinds we have been discussing. A surprise for you, SolarWakeup special correspondent and media consultant, Frank Andorka interviewed a few folks on the floor. Listen to the Podcasts here and here. They are quick and have a nice perspective.

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Have a great day!
Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for July 12th, 2016

Money flows in and money wants out. There is an interesting aspect of our business when people are trying to figure out the value of the money that went into the company that they invested in. There are some apparent ripples in our sector that could be but hopefully are not canaries in the coal mine. If you are a hedge fund or private equity firm, how are you looking at the value of the investment you made? At Intersolar this week, there will be many announcement about the investments that they were able to draw into their company, solar and storage alike.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for July 11th, 2016

I am on the flight to San Francisco for Intersolar North America. If you looked in advance, you will see a lot more storage at the show this year than previously. Storage is kicking off its market this year, lots of capital coming in and partnerships being announced. I can only hope that storage will springboard off the solar market position and not make many of the same mistakes we did. If you are a storage CEO, do you have your financing strategy? Your consumer offering? Are you focused? Let’s see how it is presented and I hope to see many of you there. Make sure to tell your friends and colleagues that they should subscribe as well by forward this email to your entire office.

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Yann

These are the top 10 most read solar articles by your peers this week!

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for July 8th, 2016

If you don’t follow me on Snapchat, you are missing some great conversations and insight. There is not enough space for us to have a dialogue on here, so make sure you follow here. The corporate funding of solar is down, we knew this was coming and we see it happening. Big solar is shrinking its overhead because platforms don’t have a solid way of funding its business. The issue is that projects cannot get put together if platforms don’t get the funding. How do we solve this? See you all on Monday!

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for July 7th, 2016

Eric Wesoff from GTM has a great piece this morning about the financial position of Sungevity prior to announcing the merger with Easterly. The 8-K and corresponding presentation have a load of information and the article explains it quite well. What it comes down to is the lack of flow from lead to customer to aggregator (finance platform) and finally to long term owner. Each level of solar development is showing to have too much friction and cost for what the deals can be developed for. Add together the drive to increase volume (which costs money) with the lack of liquidity and you end up with asset rich and cash poor balance sheets. Margins exist, much like the solar unicorn. We shall find him together at Intersolar next week!

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for July 6th, 2016

We need to have a chat. There is a lot going on in solar and most likely it is affecting you in some way. I want to hear from you so that we can talk about the most important obstacles that we need to overcome and how we can accomplish that. There is a link on solarwakeup.com that you can use if you want to remain anonymous, you can send an email to me at anytime or you can use Snapchat (add me on this link). Most importantly, let me know if you are at Intersolar next week.

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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for July 5th, 2016

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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Yann

This is your SolarWakeup for July 1st, 2016

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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Yann