SolarCity raises another $347 million, switches CFOs

Tanguy Serra will be stepping down from his post as president as well at the end of the year.

September 28, 2016 Christian Roselund

Shifting sales strategies by national residential installers like SolarCity will cause customer acquisition costs to rise in the short term - but as the market adjusts, GTM Research predicts they will fall below their previous 2013 lows.

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Despite a host of troubles including a new lawsuit by SunPower subsidiary Cogenra and lawsuits threatening to block its acquisition by Tesla, SolarCity continues to do what it does best: raise money to deploy more solar. Today the company announced that it has partnered with Citi to create two funds with a total value of over $347 million.

The first fund is expected to finance more than $248 million in residential solar projects across the United States, and the second roughly $63 million in commercial and industrial (C&I) PV systems for “small and medium-sized businesses” in California.

This is not the first time that Citi has collaborated with SolarCity on project funds, and SolarCity notes that repeat investors are important for its business due to its fast pace of project origination.

Along with the new funding, SolarCity has announced that Radford Small has replaced Tanguy Serra as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at the company. Serra will step down from his role as president as well at the end of the year, with SolarCity citing the pending acquisition by Tesla.

“Tanguy has played a pivotal role in helping SolarCity achieve the lowest operations costs in the solar industry,” said SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive in a press release. “He is extremely talented, but due to overlap at the new company, he is going to pursue a new venture.”

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