Solfácil Raises $170M to Finance the Installation of Solar Kits for Its Clients in Brazil

Solar energy platform Solfácil raised $170M, its largest FIDC (Credit Rights Investment Fund) issue in its history. The funds will be used to finance the installation of solar kits for customers.

The startup operates as a fintech company for the solar energy market and finances the sales of more than 8,000 integrators active on the platform.

Since 2021, Solfácil has also been selling items needed for solar projects, such as panels, inverters and cables. Each division represents 50% of the business, which had a turnover of more than $170M last year.

“Last year we doubled our origination and reached $250M in financing. “We also doubled the sale of kits,” said Frenchman Guillaume Tiret, CFO and co-founder of Solfácil. “This year we should not double, but we will still have a high growth rate,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg Línea.

The Solfácil collection

With the new fundraising, the Solfácil startup raised $850M in the capital market, between FIDCs and CRIs (Real Estate Accounts Receivable Certificates).

The fintech “arm” is structured in a B2B2C model, in which Solfácil releases credit to integrators -or sellers- and the amounts are used to finance solar energy projects for end consumers.

About 90% of the projects are installed in residential properties, with the remainder in small businesses such as bakeries and grocery stores. The average cost of each installation is around $3,000, a drop of about 27% compared to the value of around $5,000 a year ago.

The pace of production of equipment from China, the world’s leading exporter in the sector, has contributed to the reduction in prices for solar energy projects worldwide.

“The drop in equipment prices more than offset the increase in the Selic rate. Even with sky-high interest rates, it still makes a lot of sense for people to finance the purchase of a solar asset for their homes,” Tiret said.

“The payback period is still very good, in the order of four to five years. In the North and Northeast, it is between three and four years.”

Solfácil has accumulated more than $679M in credit granted, distributed across more than 145 thousand solar systems. Installments can be made over a period of up to ten years.

According to the CFO, Solfácil ‘s initial goal was to raise US$84M. Faced with strong demand from Brazilian banks, executives reversed their decision and doubled the amount.

The startup operates in the distributed energy generation market, a market that is growing year after year. According to the most recent data from Aneel, the country’s regulatory body for the sector, Brazil has 3.28 million systems connected to the energy distribution network, with an installed capacity of close to 36.90 gigawatts (GW). Solfácil’s projects have an installed capacity of 1.2 GW.

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(Featured image by  Nuno Marques via Unsplash)

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