SOLV Energy, a solar and battery storage construction contractor, grabbed a nearly $6 billion valuation during its stock-market debut on Wednesday. The company is the first pure-play solar and storage EPC firm to go public on a U.S. exchange — and part of a new wave of clean tech companies going public after a yearslong drought.
The IPO, experts told Latitude Media, suggests that investors see renewables growing alongside the data center boom.
SOLV Energy has a nearly $8-billion backlog of solar and storage projects, mostly for utilities and independent power producers grappling with demand from gigawatt-scale clusters of data centers, according to the company’s SEC filing. CEO George Hershman told Latitude that the reshoring of U.S. manufacturing also has meant new demand; for example, SOLV Energy is building utility-scale solar for Intel’s new advanced chip factory in Arizona.
The company, which operates solely in the U.S., is “seeing historic growth in the market,” Hershman said. “There’s plenty of opportunity here.”
SOLV Energy is one of several energy firms that’ve already filed for IPO listings this year, including geothermal company Fervo Energy and electrical equipment maker Forgent Power. The uptick marks a shift in the market, because there hasn’t been notable IPOs for a couple years, said Rob Barnett, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence covering global solar, wind, and carbon research.
Energy EPC firms — which provide engineering, procurement, and construction services to the industry — have seen an even longer fallow period. The last to go public was Primoris Services Corporation in 2008.
Barnett noted that more broadly, clean energy stocks have been on a good run for the last 18 months, despite the Trump administration’s criticism of solar and wind energy and rollback of federal support for the industry. That’s because there’s rising electricity demand from data centers and other large loads, and solar and battery storage are some of the cheapest and fastest technologies to add to the grid.
“We’re in an energy deficit,” Hershman said. “We need to build energy to support the digital economy. If we’re going to do that, then lots of forms of energy need to move forward. Solar is the lowest cost, fastest to deploy. So I think that’s why you’re seeing some projects, at least in solar and storage, move forward.
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