A restructured, post-bankruptcy SunPower has picked up its first company in its acquisition drive to return to a leading position in the U.S. solar business: Sunder Energy, a 6-year-old, veteran-owned residential solar company. Both companies are based in the Salt Lake City area.
When SunPower chief executive officer T.J. Rodgers told pv magazine USA in early June that he was hunting for acquisition targets to “inorganically grow” company, he had already been negotiating to buy Sunder since March.
“We have been working on Sunder as our top acquisition priority for exactly six months and seven days, ever since I met with their President, Eric Nielsen, in Mexico on my birthday to get to know him and Sunder better,” a SunPower release quoted Rodgers as saying.
Since purchasing big chunks of SunPower out of bankruptcy last fall, Rodgers has made the reconstituted company’s first buyout for $40 million in cash and $10 million in shares.
The release’s headline contends the purchase will put SunPower, based in Salt Lake City, in the “U.S. No. 5 Spot” without further elaboration. In a SunPower webcast, Rodgers also projected that the Sunder acquisition would:
- Add $74 million to SunPower’s projected $297.1 million in revenue in this year’s fourth quarter.
- Bring a broad portfolio of software to streamline virtually every facet of sales, such as customer-acquisition and customer-relationship management.
- Double SunPower’s sales “headcount” from 841 to 1,734.
- Bring revenue from an estimated 5,500 new solar contracts a year expected to average a $40,000 installation purchase price.
- “Multiply” SunPower’s numbers of sales specialists in the key solar markets of California, Florida and Texas, where more than 75 percent of Sunder’s sales volume originates.
Rodgers said several top Sunder executives, whose company is based in the Salt Lake City satellite town of South Jordan, would stay with SunPower in executive-vice-president roles: Max Britton, Sunder co-founder and CEO, overseeing SunPower’s new dealer division; Eric Nielsen, co-founder and president, directing sales and marketing; and Devon Glassman, chief operating officer, watching over sales operations.
With help from buyout deals, Rodgers is pushing a multi-year drive to restore SunPower to its former greatness as a longtime, high-quality operator with a valuable brand – and high brand premium. He also aims to lift company revenue to a whopping $1 billion by 2028.
Rodgers intends to achieve that feat partly by restoring SunPower’s formerly high standard of technological efficiency and quality. The company is working with Singapore-based REC Solar to jointly develop a high-output solar module. He also has leaned down the company to drive profitability. While he said the SunPower assets he purchased employed about 3,499 workers, the new company maintains about a quarter of that payroll.
But Rodgers said SunPower is not done scouring the solar industry for acquisition partners.
The 77-year-old Rodgers and SunPower go back to 2001, when he invested in the company to avert its demise. The company he was then leading, Cypress Semiconductor, bought a stake in SunPower in 2002 and the whole company in 2005. Rodgers served as chairman until 2012.
In recent times, after Complete Solar and The Solaria Corp. merged to become Complete Solaria in 2023, Rodgers began investing in the combined company, becoming its executive chairman. He added the title of chief executive officer in the first half of 2004.
On behalf of Complete Solaria, Rodgers chased key SunPower key assets after it fell into bankruptcy in mid-2024, investing $45 million to buy its residential unit, Blue Raven Solar; its solar-integration unit; and its non-installing dealer network.
This past spring, Complete Solaria began wholly rebranding the company under the SunPower name, trading as SunPower on the Nasdaq Stock Market and moving its headquarters from California to Utah.
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