SolarCity Corp, the solar power provider led by billionaire Elon Musk, jumped 47 percent after raising less than first sought in an initial public offering (IPO).
The shares rose to US$11.79 at the close in New York. San Mateo, California-based SolarCity and shareholders on Thursday raised US$92 million in the offering, selling 11.5 million shares for US$8 apiece after earlier seeking as much as US$151 million, according to regulatory filings and a statement.
The company, which builds solar systems on customers’ rooftops and sells them the electricity, reported a US$95 million net loss in the 12 months through September. CEO Lyndon Rive said the business model requires significant upfront investment and will become cash flow positive by the end of next year as new customers generate enough revenue to cover the costs of buying and installing panels.
“We are installers, yes, but that’s just a part of our business,” Rive, 35, said in an interview yesterday. “What we really do is provide clean electricity at a lower price than your utility.”
SolarCity typically sells electricity for 10 percent to 15 percent less than customers pay utilities.
At the offering price, SolarCity was valued at about US$585 million, or about 4.7 times sales in the past 12 months, compared with multiples of less than 1 for publicly traded peers. The shares sold in the IPO represent a 16 percent stake in SolarCity, and chairman Musk bought US$15 million of the offering, according to a regulatory filing.
The IPO raised 39 percent less than originally sought after the company increased the number of shares offered from 10.1 million and decreased the price from a range of US$13 to US$15. SolarCity’s investors extracted a lower price even as the company is poised for growth after completing the most equipment installations in California, the US’ biggest solar-power market.
While demand for alternative energy rises, solar-company stocks have declined because of oversupply of equipment and raw materials.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day