Despite COVID-19 related disruptions, the global solar PV market remained resilient and interesting enough for investors to pool in financial resources into the sector as Mercom Capital Group's 2020 Solar Funding and M&A Report counts an annual increase of 24% in the total corporate funding of $14.5 billion in solar last year.
Even though there was an annual decline of 25% in corporate funding in H1/2020, Mercom's CEO Raj Prabhu says the recovery in H2/2020 was 'swift and broad'.
"Publicly-traded solar companies had an unprecedented year. The solar ETF was up 225%, with 15 solar stocks up over 100% in 2020. Public market funding was also up with the help of several IPOs, and debt financing was up on the back of securitization deals," explained Prabhu. "Solar asset acquisitions were at an all-time high in a pandemic year and have become even more sought-after as an investment haven, especially in the uncertain COVID economy."
In 2019, this amount was calculated to a total of $11.7 billion which itself reflected a growth of 20% on annual basis (see 2019 Global Corp Funding For Solar Amounted To $11.7 Billion).
According to the report, global venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) funding amounted to $1.2 billion in 41 deals, with 27 downstream companies accounting for 90% of the total amount with solar service providers raising $61 million. Other beneficiaries of this funding were PV companies, balance of system (BOS) companies and thin film technology firms. The top deal in this category was $390 million raised by Ayana (see India PV News Snippets: Manufacturing, NVVN, Ayana, HCCB).
Last year, Array Technologies raised $1.2 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) during Q4/2020 contributing the largest amount to $5.1 billion in public market financing that grew 101% YoY.
Announced debt financing was $8.3 billion rising 6.4% thanks to 8 securitization deals worth $2.2 billion which Mercom says was the largest amount of financing through securitization in a year.
There were 62 merger and acquisition (M&A) deals last year with most transactions involving solar downstream companies and the largest among these was Sunrun's acquisition of Vivint Solar's for $3.2 billion (see Sunrun's Acquisition Of Vivint Solar Complete).
The report writers calculate 39.5 GW of large scale projects having changed ownership in 2020 compared to 26.1 GW in the year before making 2020 the year when the largest amount of projects was acquired in a single year.
The report can be purchased at Mercom's website for prices starting from $599.