How SunPower Plans to Preserve Its Federal Investment Tax Credits

Energy

Published: October 7, 2019 10:30 am

Last Updated: January 30, 2020 2:58 pm

SunPower Corp. (NASDAQ: SPWR) made a handy gain on Monday after the company announced that it has entered into a joint venture with Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure Capital Inc. (NYSE: HASI).

The joint venture is to acquire and deploy 200 megawatts (MW) of safe harbored panels, preserving the federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) 30% value for third-party owned commercial and residential systems and meeting safe harbor guidelines. The companies expect to increase the volume in later years.

Note that the federal investment tax credit is slated to step down from 30% at the end of this year to 26% in 2020, 22% in 2021 and then level at 10% for commercial customers and zero for residential customers in 2022 and beyond.

This safe harbor facility is expected to preserve 30% ITC value for projects placed in service from now through mid-2022.

Tom Werner, SunPower CEO and board chair, commented:

SunPower customers have always benefitted from our leading, innovative solar solutions and services and now they will have additional certainty of savings through our safe harbor joint venture enabling them to take advantage of the ITC 30 percent value post the step down on January 1, 2020. This flexible and highly capital efficient safe harbor facility provides us with a great opportunity to once again partner with Hannon Armstrong, who shares our clean energy future goals.

Shares of SunPower traded up about 2% Monday morning to $10.79, in a 52-week range of $4.55 to $16.04. The consensus price target is $10.69.

Hannon traded at $28.62 a share. The 52-week range is $18.83 to $29.98, and the consensus price target is $29.78.