Vivint Inc. has confidentially filed for an initial public offering (IPO) for its solar business, according to a report by Reuters. The news agency says that Vivint may launch the IPO as early as this fall, depending on market conditions.
Vivint is reported to be working with a group of banks including Goldman Sachs, however none of the parties have been willing to comment, and the filing is not accessible through the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) database.
GTM Research Solar Analyst Nicole Litvak says that a lack of publicly available information about both Vivint Solar's workings and this IPO make it difficult to know the full impacts that this move will have.
It's hard to say how exactly the IPO will change how they are structuring deals, how they are financing projects, but of course this will open up a new source of funding and allow them to continue what they have been doing, which is catching up to SolarCity, notes Litvak.
While Vivint Solar's U.S. residential market share at 9% in the first quarter of 2014 is still well below SolarCity's share of 29%, Litvak says that the company's growth over the last few years has been impressive.
In 2012 when SolarCity held its IPO the company installed 85 MW of solar PV, and in 2013 Vivint installed 60 MW, only two years after its founding. That's still a long way that they came in just two years, notes Litvak.
Obviously there are a lot of questions that we all have that we are not going to get answers to in this confidential filing.
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