Mercom Capital Group, llc, a global clean energy communications and consulting firm, today released its report on funding and merger and acquisition (M&A) activity for the wind energy sector for the first quarter of 2012.
Venture capital (VC) funding in the first quarter came in strong with $240 million going into a record number of 12 deals, compared to just $12 million going into two deals last quarter.
Top VC deals in the first quarter included a $183 million raise by Element Power, a global project developer, and a $20.2 million raise by ReGen Powertech, a turnkey solution provider and wind turbine manufacturer. Other top transactions included an $18.6 million raise by project developer Leap Green Energy, a $10 million raise by Apex Wind Energy, a developer of commercial scale wind facilities, and a $3.5 million raise by Pentalum, a developer of Wind LiDAR for remote wind sensing.
The first quarter marked the strongest M&A activity for the wind sector, in terms of transactions, since Q1 2010 with $872 million in 11 transactions, of which only three transactions had details disclosed. As a technology group, wind downstream companies had the most deals with four followed by manufacturers, wind components, service providers and BOS companies.
The top M&A deals were the $850 million acquisition of Seajacks International, a UK-based offshore Wind Power Service provider, by Marubeni Corporation and Innovation Network Corporation of Japan, the $12 million acquisition of Fuji Heavy Industries’ Wind Turbine Generator Business by Hitachi, and the $10.2 million acquisition of a 49.9 percent stake in OWEC Tower, an offshore wind turbine foundation designer by KV Ventus.
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Offshore WIND staff, April 18, 2012; Image: globaltechone