Geothermal power developer Fervo Energy priced its IPO at $27 per share, raising $1.89 billion on Tuesday night.
Why it matters: The upsized IPO shows surging investor interest in clean energy stocks amid the backdrop of the AI boom and the Iran war.
Zoom in: The Houston-based company sold 70 million shares of Class A common stock, giving it at a valuation of $7.7 billion.
- Underwriters also have the option to purchase an additional 10.5 million shares. The max proceeds including the greenshoe could deliver $2.17 billion.
- The offering was massively oversubscribed, says a source with knowledge of the offering, and bankers are marketing it as “the largest primary clean energy public equity deal of all time.”
The intrigue: The largest shareholders before the offering include shale firm Devon Energy, Capricorn Investment Group, DCVC, and Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
- Other investors include B Capital, Google, Congruent Ventures, Galvanize, and Prelude Ventures.
- A source told Axios Pro in recent weeks that the public offering has seen a surge of investor interest driven by soaring AI power demand and general disruption in energy markets from the Iran war.
- Earlier this week, Fervo boosted its IPO plans, aiming to raise up to $1.82 billion at a $7.2 billion valuation.
- Fervo set its target range at $25-$26 per share.
- The company says in its S-1 that it has 3.65 GW of power plant capacity under construction, or in advanced stages of development. Another 42 GW could be developed.
- Fervo says its first commercial project, called Cape Station, will deliver electricity at $7,000 per kilowatt of installed capacity, and its goal is to cut that cost by more than half, to $3,000 per kW of installed capacity.
- The company generated a net loss of just under $57.8 million last year, on almost no revenue ($140,000).
Hot rocks are a hot investment. Investors will find out just how hot today.
Fervo Energy, a Houston-based geothermal energy firm that drills deep into the earth to harness steam to generate electricity, sold $1.9 billion worth of shares at $27 a share late Tuesday. The stock will start trading on the Nasdaq today under the ticker FRVO
The capital raise was larger than the $1.3 billion the company initially anticipated, and it values Fervo at a market cap of around $8 billion.
Fervo is backed by Bill Gates, who sees geothermal as a clean and reliable way to generate electricity. The company reported just $138,000 in revenue last year and is spending heavily, leading to a $57.8 million loss. But it has partnerships with tech firms like Google, who think geothermal could help it power things like data centers while sticking to its goals to decarbonize operations.