Maxeon’s world-leading solar tech faces hard road ahead

Just a few months ago, Singapore-based solar manufacturer and longtime solar technology leader Maxeon was issuing press releases about the new jobs it would create at a massive $1.9 billion solar cell and panel factory in New Mexico that was to be backed by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Today, Maxeon is fighting for its life as it faces financial woes, the departures of its CEO and CFO, and the bankruptcy of its once largest customer, SunPower — all the while confronting plunging panel prices thanks to brutal global competition.

Last month, Maxeon withdrew its annual revenue and profit forecasts and was unable to provide financial guidance for the third quarter. The company’s stock price has fallen 99.14 percent so far this year; it’s already had to perform a 100-to-1 stock split to avoid being delisted from the Nasdaq stock exchange.

The firm’s higher-priced, higher-efficiency solar panels carry the technological DNA and deep patent portfolio of SunPower, the pioneering U.S. solar company it was spun out of in 2020. Founded in Silicon Valley in 1985, SunPower distinguished itself with world-record solar-cell performance. Maxeon has taken up that mantle itself in recent years and currently makes the most efficient solar panels in the world.

If Maxeon doesn’t survive this turbulent patch, it will join its sister company — and many firms before them — in the realm of shuttered solar leaders.

If Maxeon does survive, the celebrated American intellectual property and patents it owns for the highest-performing silicon solar technology ever to be commercialized will rest in the hands of a Chinese state-owned entity. That could make it difficult for the company to do business in the U.S., as some federal lawmakers have opposed Chinese involvement in other domestic clean energy manufacturing projects.

Over the summer, Maxeon was rescued, in some sense, by its largest shareholder, China’s Zhonghuan Renewable Energy Technology, or TZE, which provided $197.5 million in equity and debt in exchange for a majority stake. This transaction essentially ceded control of Maxeon to TZE’s parent company, TCL, a Chinese partially state-owned entity and electronics conglomerate that builds televisions, phones, and appliances — and now high-performance solar panels.

In an earlier solar bubble and collapse, Chinese conglomerate Hanergy acquired the remains and IP of a number of failed U.S. solar companies including MiaSolé and Alta Devices.

With the shift in ownership, George Guo, formerly of TCL Communication Technology, will become Maxeon’s CEO. Current CEO Bill Mulligan will retire in January.

The ownership change comes as the U.S. rapidly expands its solar-panel manufacturing capacity thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, a shift motivated in no small part by the government’s desire to become less reliant on China’s world-leading solar industry. It also comes amid heightened trade tensions between the countries; the Biden administration has placed steep tariffs on everything from semiconductors to solar panels made in China.