Energy Vault to go public in SPAC deal
Westlake Village-based Energy Vault will go public after entering into an agreement with the special purpose acquisition company Norvus Capital Corp., in a deal worth up to $388 million.
The combined company will have an enterprise value of about $1.1 billion once the deal is complete, according to a Sept. 9 news release from Energy Vault.
Norvus came to this agreement with Energy Vault on Sept. 8, according to Norvus’ filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission.
Norvus currently trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol NXU. Once the transaction is complete, which is expected to happen in the first quarter of 2022, Energy Vault will begin trading on the NYSE under the symbol GWHR.
As part of the transaction agreement, Energy Vault is expected to raise $100 million through a PIPE, or private investment in public equity.
The rest of the money, about $288 million, is held by Norvus itself, but that total could shrink if existing investors pull their money before the deal goes through.
This SPAC deal is in addition to the $100 million raised by Energy Vault during a Series C funding round that closed Aug. 25.
Energy Vault develops gravity-based energy storage systems that the company says are more durable and efficient than other energy storage solutions. The system uses cranes that lift heavy bricks to store renewable energy and then lower them to release it.
Energy Vault saw its first big commercial win recently, after connecting its first energy storage system to Switzerland’s national grid.
Shortly after, in April of this year, Energy Vault announced its EVx platform. EVx is expected to have about a 35-year technical life, 83%-85% round-trip efficiency as well as a flexible design that will allow it to withstand harsh weather conditions and adapt to any environment, Energy Vault said.
This is what the $100 million in new venture capital will be used for: to support the execution of Energy Vault’s expansion plans of its multi-continent deployments of EVx.
In an email interview with the Business Times in August regarding that Series C capital raise, Energy Vault CEO Robert Piconi said more than $270 billion worth of investments in energy storage could be made available over the next decade as the demand to meet storage capabilities grows. “Bearing that kind of scale in mind, we wouldn’t rule out raising additional capital in the future to meet this huge market opportunity,” Piconi said.
