The leaders of the energy storage joint venture launched less than four years ago by Siemens and AES Corp. on Tuesday said they have filed papers for an initial public offering.
Fluence Energy was formed in early 2018 (but has piggybacked on work done by AES since 2007), is headquartered in Northern Virginia and has about 400 employees. The venture is working on electric grid resiliency projects in with more than 3.4 GW of energy storage deployed or contracted in 29 markets around the world. It also has more than 4.5 GW of wind, solar and storage assets optimized or contracted in Australia and California. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Fluence officials say the megawatts they had deployed as of May were the equivalent of taking more than 30,000 cars per year off the road.
In addition to Siemens, Fluence has contracts with Enel, LS Power and sPower, among others, and is a player in a large-scale battery storage market that BloombergNEF expects to grow nearly tenfold this decade to 34.2 GW. As of June 30, the team led by CEO Manuel Perez Dubuc had $885 million worth of contracts in its pipeline and nearly $700 million in assets. The company’s revenues were $561 million in its fiscal 2020 and $430 million through the first nine months of fiscal 2021, while its year-to-date 2021 net losses were about $75 million.
In their prospectus, Fluence’s executives say they plan to grow their business by, among other things, investing in products, services and digital applications and building out their manufacturing network. Also on the table as growth options are acquisitions and the incubation of new business models. Some of the planned IPO’s proceeds will go toward paying off a line of credit and $50 million in promissory notes issued to Siemens and AES this summer.
In addition to Siemens and AES, Fluence’s backers include Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, which late last year committed $125 million to back the venture’s growth. As part of its IPO plans, Fluence also plans to finalize a $200 million revolving credit line with a bank group led by JPMorgan Chase.
If the IPO is completed – its size and offering price hasn’t yet been finalized – shares of company will be traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol FLNC. A consortium of 16 investment banks and led by J.P. Morgan Securities, Morgan Stanley, Barclays Capital and BofA Securities will market the offering.
