Evergreen Solar Prices Secondary Offering (ESLR)

Evergreen Solar Inc. (NASDAQ: ESLR) has priced its secondary share offering at $9.50 per share.  This is down from over $12.00 just a few days ago and under the $10.02 closing price of yesterday.

This discount pricing is a bit aggressive discounting compared to what this would have been expected considering the sell-off we had already seen, and it is a deeper discount than the market chatter was indicating just on Friday.  While Evergreen isn’t exactly the best solar player out there and while the company has had problems in the past compared to top solar stocks, the proceeds are being used for a plant manufacture and development and for general corporate proceeds rather than "rewarding insiders."  The original offering was for up to 20 million shares.  We had noted that this one might be oversold ahead of the secondary just on Friday.  That still looks to be the case here, but we’ll be the first to admit that this discounting was far too much when you consider the greater-than-peers sell-off seen last week.

The net proceeds to Evergreen before any overallotment and after initial fees will be some $145.16 million shares.  Deutsche Bank, Lazard, Pacific Growth, Simmons & Co., and ThinkEquity are all listed as the underwriters.

Shares are trading down over 2.5% pre-market at $9.75.

Jon C. Ogg
February 12, 2008