By Yann Brandt; Vivint Solar announced today that it has raised $200 million in new tax equity, a day before announcing it’s 3rd quarter financial results. The $200 million were critical given the delay the company was having in raising new tax equity after a failed acquisition by Sunedison. Vivint Solar even went out of its way to negotiate a new compensation deal with Thomas Plagemann, the EVP of Capital Markets. Plagemann is entitled to 0.15% of tax equity raised as part of the bonus compensation. The $200 million will go a long way to and help finance 123MW for an estimated $480 million of system values.
In the 3rd quarter, Vivint Solar announced that it had booked and installed 59MW. The 59MW came from 8,266 systems for a cumulative amount of 93,138. The average system size was 7.1kW but the total installed amount was a 2MW decrease from the same quarter last year. You can likely blame the focus on the acquisition on the decreased sales and marketing efforts.
The quarter showed signs of improvements. The total system costs decreased to $2.85/watt from $2.94/watt last quarter and $3.12/watt in Q32015. Sales and marketing costs came in at $0.55/watt in the quarter in line with average costs over the past 10 quarters. The $0.55/watt is significantly lowed than competitor SolarCity, which disclosed sales and marketing costs of $0.71/watt in Q2 of this year. SolarCity will release financial information on November 9th after market close.
In other financial data, Vivint Solar estimated that retained value per share was $5.97 per share which reflects an almost 100% premium over its current trade price of $3.05 per share. The current contracts have remaining payment obligations of $2.48 billion which is pre-debt payments so the cost of capital on those non-recourse loans are quire important.
Q3 Presentation
Q3 Financials
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Q3 Cost per Watt Methodology