US residential solar installer and leasing company Vivint Solar is preparing to make an initial public offering (IPO) of common stock, having made a filing with the US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC).
Vivint has filed form S-1, the standard form for companies registering to go public with the SEC. The company plans to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
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News of the IPO was first picked up at the beginning of this month, when Reuters news agency reported through unnamed sources that the company had made a confidential filing. The filing of form S-1 confirms the news, but the company left blank areas relating to the number of shares to be offered and the price range of shares.
According to the prospectus issued by Vivint, the company installed an aggregate of 129.7MW of PV generation capacity across 21,900 homes in seven US states since May 2011, when the company was founded, and the end of June this year. The prospectus also quoted GTM Research’s finding that the company is currently second only to rival firm SolarCity in the US residential solar market. Additionally, the company’s parent group, Vivint Inc, was acquired for US$2 billion by investment firm Blackstone Group in 2012.
Book running on the IPO will be led by Goldman Sachs, BofA Merril Lynch and Credit Suisse Securities. Prospectuses are available from all three. Also acting as managers of the book-running will be Barclays Capital Inc, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank Securities. Interestingly, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup have both recently issued reports on the outlook for solar, in Morgan Stanley’s case focusing on solar-plus-storage but also covering rooftop and other market segments, while Citigroup recently issued a report describing the outlook for global solar as “increasingly bright”.