Sacramento-based solar panel manufacturer SPI Energy Co. Ltd. has raised $1.16 million in a private placement of stock with an affiliate of the company’s CEO.
SPI Energy (Nasdaq: SPI) CEO Denton Peng wasn’t available for comment. He’s traveling internationally, said Andrew Hughan, director of government relations with SPI.
The company recently completed the expansion of its solar module manufacturing line from 650 megawatts to 1.3 gigawatts of panel production. The new manufacturing line will begin testing and production in the coming months, Hughan said.
SPI is on track to begin its roadshow in January to spin off its SolarJuice subsidiary in a stock offering. The prospective shares for SolarJuice Co. Ltd. have not been priced and there is no number of shares offered listed yet, according to MarketWatch. The company announced the spinoff in September.
SolarJuice Co. Ltd. would be based in Australia, and SPI Energy would own more than 50% of its voting shares, according to a registration statement filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a foreign-owned company to be listed on an American exchange.
SolarJuice would also own the photovoltaic panel manufacturing operation SPI Energy currently owns at McClellan Park. SPI has 196,000 square feet of leased space at McClellan.
The company now produces 400 panels a day with more than 100 employees. It's planning to more than double that by early next year, and then to drive solar module manufacturing capacity to 2.4 gigawatts in 2023 and 5 gigawatts in 2024, Peng said last month on a conference call with analysts and investors.
Starting in the new year, the Sacramento operation will receive 7 cents per watt of solar modules produced from the state of California under a manufacturing credit program. The panels the Sacramento factory builds are 410 watts per panel.
SPI sells its panels to distributors and large-scale installers, Hughan said.
The company currently sources about 40% of its materials domestically, and it's working to get more domestic suppliers, including building solar wafers itself domestically next year.
