The China Securities Regulatory Commission has approved the registration of CSI Solar, the engineering, procurement, and construction arm of solar module maker Canadian Solar, to issue an initial public offering (IPO).

The company’s CEO Shawn Qu, said CSI expects the completion of the IPO by the second quarter of the current financial year.

Canadian Solar plans to use the proceeds from the IPO to further accelerate vertical integration and capacity expansion, particularly in the U.S. market. “We have already prepared $1.5 billion capital expenditure for the current year,” Senior Vice President and CFO of Canadian Solar Huifeng Chang said.

“We have been working on the IPO registration for two and a half years. So obviously, we want to get that deal done as soon as possible. And then there’s a process such as further updating our financial information and then roadshow, among others, which we expect to complete quickly,” Chang added.

Early in 2020, Canadian Solar announced that it has decided to list its business on Chinese capital markets and hinted that it would pursue a listing of its Module and System Solutions business either on the Shanghai Stock Exchange’s Science and Technology Innovation Board or the Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s ChiNext market.

Based on the precedents in the China IPO market, the listing process was estimated to take place in 18-24 months.

In January, Canadian Solar entered a multi-year investment agreement with the municipal government of Yangzhou City in Jiangsu Province of China for capacity additions across the company’s solar and battery storage supply chain.

The capacity expansion will be executed in three phases. In the first phase, the company will set up 14 GW of wafer and cell capacity. Production is scheduled to commence during the second half of the financial year 2023.

CSI Solar shipped 21.1 GW of solar modules in 2022, up by 45% YoY, while the utility-scale battery storage shipments doubled to 1.79 GWh from last year.

Last year, Canadian Solar signed an agreement with SPIC Brasil, a power generation company in Brazil, to sell a 70% stake in 738 MW of solar projects in Brazil.