RGS Energy: Troubling Inconsistencies

Garvin Jabusch

About three weeks ago, I posted a piece called “RGS Energy, Tempered, Opportunistic Growth,” an optimistic bit of coverage on one of our holdings,  (RGSE), that included an 18-month price target of $10.00 per share. Since then, several developments and pieces of information have come to light that have caused us to revise our assessment of the company.

Thursday, July 3, a quiet half-market day, RGS Energy released a statement announcing plans to monetize its previously filed potential shelf offering; “RGS Energy (NASDAQ: RGSE) has entered into a definitive agreement to raise approximately $7.0 million in a private placement financing transaction. Under the terms of the agreement, RGS Energy will issue units consisting of an aggregate of 2,919,351 shares of its Class A common stock and warrants to purchase up to 1,313,708 additional shares of Class A common stock, at a price of $2.40 per unit.” This deal has been offered to and accepted by as yet undisclosed buyers at well below RGSE’s market price in the $2.90s on July 3. The market reacted unfavorably to this low self-valuation from RGSE, driving the share price down approximately 16 ½ percent in the two market days that have followed the announcement, but even so, the private placement valuation remains below market as of this writing.

It gets more interesting. Not only do participants receive this fire-sale valuation, but also, “[e]ach unit consists of one share of Class A common stock and a warrant to purchase 0.45 shares of Class A common stock at an exercise price of $3.19 per share. The warrants are exercisable beginning six months after issuance and for a period of five years thereafter.” So participants are buying already in-the-money shares, and also getting up to 5 ½ more years to watch the company grow, risk free, before deciding whether to buy more shares at $3.19. Frankly, I’m surprised that management thinks little enough of their firm that they felt the need to offer such a cheap price and also such a fantastic sweetener to raise equity capital. Not knowing all the deal details, I may be missing something, but if this was the best valuation RGSE could get for equity, why didn’t they use low-interest debt instead? As of last report, the company had zero long-term debt, a perfect position for a cash-flow positive business to fund operations on the cheap with some kind of note offering.

All in then, up to 6,137,936 dilutive RGSE shares may be sold at $2.40 and $3.19 per share, representing up to 13.65 percent dilution to the existing shareholders of the previously outstanding 44.97 million shares. This is in exchange for $6.4 million (net: of the $7mm raise, close to 8.6 percent, or $600,000, is going to fees and expenses) in “operating capital,” and “debt repayment,” and not necessarily so much for expansion, except a vague statement about proceeds “to support the launch of its residential leasing platform.”

When we met with RGSE’s CEO Kam Mofid on May 22, 2014, we asked him about the shelf filing that made this transaction a possibility. That day, he told us that a “shelf offering is filed, but it is to be used only opportunistically for tactical expansion.” We understand that business needs can change even in just a six-week period but the terms of the execution of the shelf offering and the uses of capital as represented in the press release don’t seem to agree with Mofid’s in-person confidence in opportunistic growth via smart use of his war chest. And Mofid represented to us that RGSE has no debt except for a revolving credit line with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which in late May he told us they pay off in full every quarter. So in what sense can their press release be accurate about using proceeds to pay down debt? Only in the sense that they will pay off the SVB line something they were already doing with cash flow with the new capital. On the contrary, now would have been the time to take on debt rather than issue new equity, thus providing the opportunity to grow the firm to the point where they could get a much better valuation for its shares upon exercising the shelf offing in another year or two.

In the end, we can’t help but feel that RGSE’s newly announced sources and uses of capital conflict with the business approach as articulated to us by the firm’s CEO less than two months before.

In the last post, I wrote that RGSE had every chance of hitting $10 per share by the end of 2015. That was based partially on the rapid growth of the solar installation industry, on our confidence in management ability to execute, and also partly on my assessment of RGSE’s value relative to the total market capitalization of SolarCity (SCTY). Since that post, SCTY has announced plans for massive vertical integration of PV panel manufacturing of the most technologically advanced panels and at prices competitive with any panels out there. This has changed the fundamental nature of SCTY and renders moot my comparison of two installation-only firms.

Where SCTY has added a high-tech manufacturing firm to its business, RGSE has signed a supply agreement with SolarWorld to source panels for installation. We can’t help but notice that it was SolarWorld that persuaded the Commerce Department to levy tariffs on Chinese solar panels imported into the U.S., thus doing more to slow the growth of RGSE’s core business than has any other single entity. According to Forbes, SolarWorld has been called “a crazed agent provocateur” and “[a]t a recent dinner in San Francisco, Suntech chief technology officer Stuart Wenham, an Australian, was just as blunt. ‘SolarWorld is a pariah…No one wants to deal with them.'” SolarWorld’s continuing efforts to undermine the economic competitiveness of solar PV in the United States would seem to fly in the face of RGSE’s long-term business interests.

Finally, then, we have to revise our price target. To external appearances, it seems RGSE may not be acting entirely within the best interests of the firm or its existing shareholders. Eschewing presumably cheap debt in favor of expensive, dilutive equity fundraising, and offering a sweetheart deal to get it done, seems to show an internal lack of confidence in the firm’s valuation and near-term prospects. Nevertheless, the simple fact that RGSE finds itself in one of America’s fastest-growing industries still bodes well for growth, and with the low current valuation, for the possibility of a takeover. We’re lowering RGSE from “buy” to a “hold” rating, and lowering our 2015 price target to U.S. $5.00. While we’re disappointed with current events, and we don’t presently intend to accumulate more shares, we are not planning to immediately exit our position in RGSE, since, as our price target indicates, we do think there’s upside potential from the current $2.53.

Disclosure: Green Alpha Advisors presently holds both RGSE and SCTY. 

Garvin Jabusch is cofounder and chief investment officer of Green Alpha ® Advisors, LLC. He is co-manager of the Shelton Green Alpha Fund (NEXTX), of the Green Alpha ® Next Economy Index,
and of the Sierra Club Green Alpha Portfolio. He also authors the Sierra Club’s green economics blog, “Green Alpha’s Next Economy.”