Solarbank CEO calls Nasdaq listing a 'validation'

Renewable energy company Solarbank (SUNN) made its Nasdaq debut on Thursday, April 11th. Solarbank President & CEO Dr. Richard Lu joins Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre to discuss the company's outlook.

Lu explains that Solarbank has been in business for 10 years, listing in Canada last year in March and on the Nasdaq just yesterday. He calls this accomplishment a "validation" and "encouragement for the team," saying Solarbank "provides the energy of the future" as an engineering firm focused on renewable energy — particularly solar.

He states that Solarbank only works with corporate clients "to reach their net zero goal." He highlights that government initiatives have compelled businesses to act, giving Solarbank's business more exposure.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance.

This post was written by Angel Smith

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: All right. Well let's stick with the energy space. I want to toss it over to our markets reporter Jared Blikre, who is taking a closer look at the renewables space. And he's joined by SolarBank CEO, Dr. Richard Lu. Jared, take it away.

JARED BLIKRE: Yes. And Richard, thank you for joining us here today. You just listed on the NASDAQ your company SolarBank. But you've also traded in Canada. You're headquartered in Toronto. So why the NASDAQ in the United States now? And just the timeline, tell us about your business.

RICHARD LU: Wonderful. Thank you, Jared, for having me here. It's a great honor to be here at Yahoo Finance. And yes, we've being actually in business for more than 10 years. We listed in Canada last year, March 2023. And in such a short time, we were able to deliver all the performances. And then I was very fortunate I was able to do the direct listing yesterday at the NASDAQ. It was a fantastic experience. We had all the team members joined us. And it's a validation. It's an encouragement. It's also an inspiration for the team.

JARED BLIKRE: Well, tell us about your business. And you're engaged in some community projects. And tell us what you've done but also what you have in the pipeline.

RICHARD LU: I can put it very simply. We provide the energy of the future, which is as soon as the sun shines, which is renewable energy. We are in origination business. We secured the site. We do permitting. We do interconnection. At the end of the day, we are the engineering firm. So we produce the production drawings. We get it built. We operate and maintain them, and also, we own them. So that's the whole process of what we do.

JARED BLIKRE: And where do these cells reside? Could they be on people's houses? Are these large industrial installations here? What are we talking about?

RICHARD LU: Excellent question. So in the business, you have residential business, which we are not involved in residential business. We put on roofs of big Fortune 100 companies such as Walmart, such as Enbridge, such as the Honeywell and other companies. So we do a lot of those behind the meter for corporate to reach their net zero gain.

JARED BLIKRE: OK. Within the United States, there have been a lot of subsidies for solar over the years. Are you able to take advantage of some of those subsidies? And then what's the current environment for that? Because congressional regulation plays a big part, and we've seen a number of stimulus acts over the last few years. Any of that hit your business?

RICHARD LU: I would say that I started this business more than 20 years ago. So you could say without the subsidy, you would not survive. But 20 years later because the cost of renewable energy dropped so much, now actually we can compete with traditional energy. So our production costs are already lower than the fossil fuels. So because of this, there are additional incentives, for example, the Inflation Reduction Act, for example, the investment tax credit. Those actually encourage people to participate so we can get a quicker flip of the energy from fossil fuels to renewables.

JARED BLIKRE: You know, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention artificial intelligence in our conversation. Doesn't immediately strike me as it might be directly applicable. But AI in general is just increasing the demand for energy worldwide. Do you think in general we're prepared for the demand increase that we're about to experience, which is probably far and above anything we thought was coming in the pipeline?

RICHARD LU: I would say that civilizations need electricity. We need electrons to give us light, to driving all the activities. AI actually is a very power-demanding technology, but that will push us advanced so fast, right?

JARED BLIKRE: Yeah. Well, I want to ask you-- we got time for one more. I'll give you the floor. Anything you want to add to the conversation here?

RICHARD LU: I would say it'd be a great honor here at the most liquid market, and we're excited on the NASDAQ market. We want to work with our communities, our government, and our corporate partners to making sure that we can achieve the net zero goal in 2035.

JARED BLIKRE: All right. And just for the record, fossil fuels are not going away completely, but we do have that net zero goal on the horizon. Thank you very much for joining us, Dr. Richard Lu.