Vivint Solar Closes Two Separate Financing Agreements Totaling $303 Million
Vivint Solar, one of America’s leading solar distributors, announced this week that it had concluded two separate financing agreements totaling $303 million.
$303 million in financing is a strong way to start off the year, and continues a healthy trend which flowed through all of 2016. Vivint Solar experienced relatively sound performance throughout 2016, despite starting it off amidst the turmoil of the SunEdison bankruptcy — SunEdison had previously agreed to acquire Vivint Solar, before Vivint Solar terminated the merger agreement in March, and immediately went to court to seek damages from SunEdison for “willful breach of merger agreement.”
Vivint Solar’s first quarter earnings were therefore tinged with doubt, as despite steady growth, the company’s shares dropped. However, successive second and third quarter reports which showed consistent if steady growth helped the company survive any lingering doubts the failed merger would scuttle the company.
In tandem, Vivint Solar also spent 2016 quite successfully and regularly bringing in multi-million-dollar financing agreements — including a $313 million agreement announced in August and $200 million in tax equity commitments in November — as well as expansions to its residential services — such as its expansion into Texas.
To start off 2017 with two separate financing agreements adding up to $303 million bodes well for the company’s year.
The first financing agreement was a fixed-rate, 18-year term debt facility with four institutional investors, totaling $203 million. According to Vivint Solar’s press release, the funds for this debt facility “relies on the contractual cash flows from four existing investment funds that comprise approximately 214 megawatts (MWs) and 30,000 residential solar systems.”
Bank of America Merrill Lynch acted as the sole syndication agent on the transaction.
“This is a milestone transaction for Vivint Solar that demonstrates its access to an additional class of term debt lenders,” said Thomas Plagemann, chief commercial officer and head of capital markets for Vivint Solar. “After closing the $313 million syndicated bank term loan facility in August 2016, this transaction completes the first full ‘turn’ of capital in our $375 million aggregation facility and validates the debt optimization strategy we outlined earlier last year.”
Vivint Solar also closed an investment with the Bank of America Merrill Lynch, an existing investor that committed $100 million follow-on investment in tax equity financing, which is set to fund the installation of over 66 MW of residential solar energy systems.
“We are thrilled that Bank of America Merrill Lynch continues to support Vivint Solar and residential solar energy development,” added Dana Russell, chief financial officer for Vivint Solar. “They have been a tremendous partner to us since our IPO in the fall of 2014.”
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