SolarCity Nasdaq (SCTY) IPO News Roundup 12/​13/​12

It was a whirl­wind day at DBL.  We were priv­i­leged to watch SolarCi­ty, one of our port­fo­lio com­pa­nies, ring the open­ing bell at Nas­daq for its first day of trad­ing as a pub­lic com­pa­ny.  All of the com­pa­ny’s hard work paid off when the stock closed near­ly 50 per­cent over its open­ing price.  Wow.  This is what impact investing–the very best route to help­ing com­pa­nies make mon­ey and a dif­fer­ence for their employ­ees and communities–is all about.

We’d love to go on about what the media said, but it’s prob­a­bly bet­ter to hear it direct­ly from some of the out­lets cov­er­ing the IPO.  This is clear­ly just a sam­pling of arti­cles, but the over­all body of cov­er­age fol­lows the same arc.

From GigaOm’s Clean­tech lead, Katie Fehren­bach­er: SolarCi­ty rings the open­ing NASDAQ bell

Solar rooftop com­pa­ny SolarCi­ty rang the NASDAQ open­ing bell this morn­ing, as the com­pa­ny debuted on the pub­lic mar­ket at $8 per share. While the $8 price point was sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than pre­vi­ous­ly expect­ed (orig­i­nal­ly at $13 to $15 range), the com­pa­ny didn’t shelve the IPO in the 11th hour, as oth­er clean­tech star­tups have done in recent months.

We’ll see how the stock fares on its inau­gur­al day, and we’ll bring you updates on that. The com­pa­ny is wide­ly seen as a bell­wether for how Wall Street will react to com­pa­nies sell­ing clean ener­gy, solar and clean­tech, and also rep­re­sents one of the few ven­ture-backed clean­tech exits in 2012. The company’s investors include co-founder and Tes­la CEO Elon Musk, as well as Drap­er Fish­er Jurvet­son, and DBL — SolarCity’s investors have agreed to buy up about a third of the avail­able float in the offering.

From CNN​.com: SolarCi­ty IPO Shines — by Mau­reen Farell

In its debut on Nas­daq (NDAQ) Thurs­day, SolarCi­ty closed 47% above its $8‑a-share ini­tial pub­lic offer­ing price. The com­pa­ny, which installs solar pan­els, said it plans to use the pro­ceeds for work­ing cap­i­tal and to expand the busi­ness through acqui­si­tions or investments.

From Forbes: SolarCi­ty Shares Up 50% in Mar­ket Debut — by Todd Wod­dy

SolarCi­ty shares were up near­ly 50% Thurs­day as the Sil­i­con Val­ley solar installer made its mar­ket debut and raised $92 million.

Whether SolarCi­ty has bro­ken the so-called solar curse that has seen sev­er­al solar man­u­fac­tur­ers file for bank­rupt and one high-pro­life com­pa­ny, Bright­Source Ener­gy, pull its IPO this year, remains to be seen. But on Thurs­day at least, the fore­cast looks sunny.

From the San Fran­cis­co Busi­ness Times: SolarCi­ty Corp. IPO elec­tri­fies — by Lind­say Riddell

The solar indus­try can breathe a sigh of relief as SolarCi­ty Corp.’s pub­lic offer­ing final­ly debuted Thursday.

The San Mateo-based solar installer raised $92 mil­lion, debut­ing at $8 a share. Its stock price jumped near­ly 47 per­cent to close at $11.79. SolarCi­ty is trad­ing on the NASDAQ under the sym­bol SCTY.