“This financing demonstrates Vivint Solar’s continued ability to access capital markets for flexible capital,” said Thomas Plagemann, executive vice president and head of capital markets for Vivint Solar. “Now that we are free from the constraints of the terminated SunEdison merger agreement, we have demonstrated our ability to rapidly access the capital markets for flexible, term-debt financing to support our continued growth.”
The non-recourse facility is secured by the cash flows available to Vivint Solar from its portfolio of installed residential solar systems supported by long-term customer contracts. Utilizing a flexible structure that provides an attractive advance rate while allowing Vivint Solar to continue to access the senior term debt market as it has done in the past, this financing will allow Vivint Solar to fund additional customer installations and provide partial credit for SREC (solar renewable energy certificate) revenues, enabling a faster return of working capital to support the growth of Vivint Solar’s portfolio, according to a release from the company. The facility has minimal near-term amortization requirements and allows Vivint Solar to utilize a portion of the cash flows generated by the operating portfolio.
Vivint announced earlier this month that it had cancelled its sale to Sun Edison, saying SunEdison was not fulfilling the terms of the agreement. According to news reports, the deal fell apart because of SunEdison’s troubled financial position after a year-long acquisition binge that included billions in solar and wind deals.
The sale was set to close by the end of February and Vivint said SunEdison was in breach of its agreement because it wasn’t ready to close the deal as prescribed. Vivint said at the time that it planned to seek legal remedies. SunEdison originally agreed to buy Vivint last July in a deal setting the value at $2.2 billion.