Japanese solar manufacturer Toyo Solar has agreed to sell over 4.5 million of its ordinary shares to raise around US$50 million to finance the expansion of the company’s cell manufacturing work in Houston, Texas.
The financing takes the form of a registered direct offering of 4,545,456 shares, with a purchase price of US$11 per share. While this would put the total price of the shares at just over US$50 million, placement fees for Roth Capital Partners and H.C. Wainwright & Co., which are operating as placement agents for the transaction, will be deducted from this total, alongside “offering expenses” payable by Toyo.
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However, Toyo said that it had entered into “definitive agreements” for the sale of these shares, and expects the deals to be completed tomorrow, marking the first “concrete financing” step for its Houston expansion work, which the company expects to cost US$357 million in total.
Toyo first announced the expansion work on 8 June, which will see the addition of 1.5GW of new heterojunction (HJT) cell manufacturing capacity to a 2.5GW module manufacturing plant that the company acquired in 2024. The company expects to start commercial operations at the cell facility in early 2028, “within 20 months” of the initial announcement made on 8 June.
As reported by PV Tech when Toyo first announced the facility two weeks ago, the company’s plans come as US manufacturers have brought lawsuits against tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) products being brought into the US, and Toyo’s manufacturing work in particular in Ethiopia.
The company’s shift to producing HJT cells in the US, which it plans to use in HJT-perovskite tandem cells, is likely in response to these events. Earlier this month, Moustafa Ramadan, head of market research at PV Tech Research, told PV Tech that expanding HJT manufacturing capacity in the US is a “smart choice” for Toyo. Manufacturers selecting HJT as the technology of choice for building solar cell and module capacity in the US has been one of the key topics at last week’s PV ModuleTech USA (subscription required) Conference in Napa, California.
Navigating this policy and legal landscape is a key challenge for the US solar industry as a whole, and the cell sector in particular. Solar Media’s PV CellTech USA Conference in San Francisco, on 13-14 October 2026, will include sessions on securing cell supply chains, global trends in cell research and design and innovative manufacturing practices, among other topics. Read the full agenda here and book tickets on the event website.
