Integrated solar tracker and software solutions firm NEXtracker, a subsidiary of diversified manufacturing company Flex, has raised $638 million in an initial public offering (IPO) by selling 26.6 million shares at $24 per share.

The shares started trading on the National Global Select Market on February 9, 2023. The offering is expected to close on February 13, 2023.

NEXtracker has also granted the underwriters a 30-day window to buy up to an additional 3.99 million shares at the IPO prices.

Most utility-scale projects installed in mature markets such as the United States, Latin America, and Australia use solar trackers. Their adoption is growing in developing solar markets such as the Middle East and Africa.

NEXtracker shipped approximately 70 GW of solar tracker systems as of September 30, 2022, to projects on six continents for use in utility-scale and ground-mounted distributed generation solar applications worth over $67 billion.

In the registration statement filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), NEXtracker said, “Our customers include engineering, procurement, and construction firms, as well as solar project developers and owners. We are a qualified, preferred provider to some of the largest solar EPC firms and solar project developers and owners in the world.”

“We have firm orders representing executed contracts, purchase orders, and volume commitment agreements for projects that total approximately $2 billion in aggregate as of September 30, 2022. These firm orders do not include our pipeline for projects that are currently in various stages of negotiations and contract execution,” it added.

The solar tracker firm referred to a report by global research and consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie, which estimated the global solar tracking market to be a $71 billion cumulative opportunity from 2020 to 2030, representing approximately 682 GW of solar capacity installed during the period.

Four solar companies went public in 2022, raising a combined $1.6 billion compared to $5.4 billion raised by ten companies in 2021, according to Mercom’s 2022 Fourth Quarter and Annual Solar Funding and M&A Report.