Photo: Lance Cheung / USDA (public domain).
Two companies that supply America’s solar farms agreed to merge on Wednesday in an all-stock deal valuing Shoals Technologies Group at about $1.32 billion, Reuters reported. The tie-up pairs ARRAY Technologies, which builds the steel trackers and mounts that hold solar panels and tilt them toward the sun, with Shoals, which makes the wiring and cable systems that carry the power away.
Shoals shareholders will receive 1.6931 ARRAY shares for each share they own – a price of $7.86 a share at announcement, about 7% below Shoals’ last closing price. Investors still cheered: Shoals stock rose about 5% and ARRAY jumped nearly 14% in premarket trading, a sign the market thinks the combined company will be worth more than the two apart.
The logic is simplicity. Today, a company building a solar farm buys the panel frames from one supplier and the electrical guts from another and pays contractors to make them work together. The merged company plans to sell both as one package, which it says will make installations faster and cheaper and the finished farms perform better. It expects $2.2 billion to $2.4 billion in combined revenue next year, including about $35 million in first-year cost savings.
In a twist, the smaller partner walks away in charge. Shoals shareholders will own about 65% of the combined company, Shoals CEO Brandon Moss will run it, and ARRAY CEO Kevin Hostetler becomes a special adviser, even though ARRAY is the legal buyer.
For households, the connection is electric bills. Solar is one of the cheapest sources of new electricity in the country, and when the companies building it can put up farms faster and for less money, that flows through to what power costs over time.
The deal is not done. It still needs shareholder and regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027.
JBizNews Desk | New York
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