Origis completes auction process, led by Onpeak, after robust private equity investor interest

Investor appetite remains robust for solar developers, especially those with both an established operational platform and strong development pipelines. Antin Infrastructure Partners won a hotly contested auction for Origis Energy this week, with NPM subscribers knowing about the deal well ahead of time as part of our coverage of live M&A processes in the renewable energy market.

Below is the M&A alert NPM published on the auction as it headed into the second round last month:

The auction for Miami-based renewable energy developer Origis Energy has advanced to the second round, said three sources familiar with the situation.

Onpeak Capital is leading the process.

The company closed a shareholder recapitalization at the beginning of 2021 which resulted in Global Atlantic Financial Group increasing its equity position in the developer, while one of the firm’s co-founders Paul Thiers was bought out.

Investor appetite remains robust for solar developers, especially those with both an established operational platform and strong development pipelines. Infrastructure funds are believed to be circling Origis, said one of the sources.

As reported, EQT struck a deal to acquire North Carolina-based Cypress Creek Renewables earlier this summer for over USD 800m, an acquisition multiple in the mid-11x range, said two of those sources. At the time, Cypress Creek had developed 11 GW of renewable energy projects, with 3.7 GW under management.

Origis was founded in 2008 in Europe and entered the US market in 2012 to take advantage of growing solar demand. Origis currently has at least 1.425 GW of solar capacity under development spread across 13 projects in the US, with six projects also featuring storage.

The company’s operational portfolio is a mixture of utility scale and community solar projects and did not include any storage components.

Origis, Global Atlantic and Onpeak declined comment on the situation. Goldman Sachs did not return calls seeking comment.