(By Balachander) SolarCity Corp. (NASDAQ: SCTY) spiked in its public debut after the developer of residential solar energy systems priced its initial public offering (IPO) of 11.50 million shares at $8.00 apiece.
Shares of the company opened at $9.25 on Thursday, rising 58 percent in mid-day trading.
San Mateo, California-based SolarCity had earlier estimated to sell 10.07 million shares at $13.00 to $15.00 apiece.
Elon Musk, board chairman, has purchased $15.0 million of common stock in this offering from the underwriters at IPO price.
The company was expected to price its IPO on Tuesday but reports surfaced that the company had pushed back its public debut.
To date, SolarCity said it has raised $1.57 billion through 23 investment funds and related financing facilities established with banks and other large companies such as Credit Suisse, Google (GOOG), PG&E Corporation (PCG) and U.S. Bancorp (USB).
The developer of solar energy systems generates revenue from a mix of residential customers, commercial entities such as Walmart (WMT), eBay (EBAY) and Intel (INTC), and government entities such as the U.S. military.
"Our goal is to become the largest provider of clean distributed energy in the world," the company had said in a regulatory filing. "We plan to achieve this disruptive strategy by providing every home and business an alternative to their energy bill that is cleaner and cheaper than their current energy provider."
The company, which commenced operations on June 2006, lost $77.95 million on revenue of $103.4 million for the first nine months of 2012. Revenue from sale of solar energy systems nearly tripled during the nine-month period compared with the same period last year.
For the year ended December 31, 2011, the company posted a net loss of $73.71 million on revenue of $59.55 million.
SolarCity offered roughly 11.43 million shares, while stockholders offered 65,012 shares.
Goldman Sachs & Co (GS), Credit Suisse and BofA Merrill Lynch are the lead underwriters for the offering.