Vivint Solar closed a $200 million term facility for U.S. residential solar projects on Monday, March 14. The financing structure was designed to provide immediate liquidity with the option to upsize and fund anticipated future growth beyond 2016. It provides flexible capital to the solar market. This is also the first step in a series of anticipated financing activities that were put on hold as a result of the now terminated SunEdison merger.
"This financing demonstrates Vivint Solar's continued ability to access capital markets for flexible capital," said Thomas Plagemann, Executive Vice President, Head of Capital Markets of 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."
Details
The non-recourse facility is secured by the cash flows available to Vivint Solar from its high-quality 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 provides partial credit for SREC revenues, enabling a faster return of working capital to support the growth of Vivint Solar's portfolio. 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, under certain conditions and at predetermined improved leverage levels, to fund additional business initiatives.
The financing is accessible in two tranches, an initial, shorter-term tranche of $75 million priced at LIBOR plus 5.5%, and a second tranche of $125 million that can be drawn over time to fund future growth. If Vivint Solar elects to draw on the second tranche, pricing will increase to LIBOR plus 8.0% and the term will extend to 4 years on the entire $200 million facility.