SWP “ASSBAF”: Latest Private Equity Juggernaut Enters Renewable Energy Sector With Patented Humility
Image: Barron’s
MIAMI, FL - Statler and Waldorf Partners (SWP), a global private equity investment firm with a distinguished history of identifying unique market strategies using their unsurpassed political connections, announced today the launch of PhotonLumenFlux Renewable Power, a new “platform” that will imagine, source, develop, construct, finance, operate, buy, sell, arbitrage, mow, raise sheep, repower, and beekeep around utility-scale solar plants and storage facilities on behalf of SWP’s Asset-Based Acquisition and Finance Group (the “ASSBAF” group) that utilizes the same strategy as all other competing private equity firms in the renewable energy space that are currently raising funds to create, buy and sell platforms to each other at increasingly lucrative valuations, until such time that anything starts to matter again.
Specifically, PhotonLumenFlux will source renewable investment opportunities through nascent greenfield development. To supplement these efforts, the ASSBAF-backed group will attempt to acquire early-stage projects from other developers by disingenuously advertising such transactions as a “JV”, “development capital revolver”, or “line of credit”, when they are actually just hand-waivey acquisitions with a theoretical purchase price that will erode precipitously post-close. When that strategy provides insufficient legitimate project pipeline around which to raise capital from new outside investors at a quickly stepped-up valuation, PhotonLumenFlux will pursue an accelerated capital deployment strategy to acquire late-stage construction-ready assets at increasingly inflated prices, so as to ensure rapid capital deployment into the sector in advance of selling the platform as quickly as possible. PhotonLumenFlux will also specialize in milkweed-flavored chevre cheese production using ancient Roman techniques that have been recently rediscovered in a Sardinian archeological site, because LP focus-groups indicated this would help with fundraising.
PhotonLumenFlux will be led by Floyd Pepper, who previously worked as the Chief Financial Officer of the revered ‘Electric Mayhem’ Development Group at SunEdison. In his career, Pepper let the “development” of more than 20 GW of solar projects, of which more than 34 MW currently produce electricity.
“Demand for renewable energy platforms and for honey made from the milkweed that thrives under unkept solar projects is greater now than it ever should have been, or that any rational market participant should possibly expect, and I’m confident that with ASSBAF’s strong backing, PhotonLumenFlux has the right foundation, principles, experience, gumption, PR agent, thought leadership, innovation, suits, creativity, boldness, leadership, trust funds, alignment, resources, expertise, grit, capital, thought leadership, Instagram feed, and Albanian-based LinkedIn chatbots to highlight our experiences, avoid detection by Meta or LinkedIn, and to create the leading renewable energy platform on a global scale,” said Pepper. “PhotonLumenFlux will also benefit from the thought leadership and vision of our team’s more than 4,000 person-years of combined collective experience of post-middle school education and life moments that might contribute to relevant knowledge of the sector. Plus, like many of the other platforms being traded back and forth between various investors, nearly all of the team worked at SunEdison as it entered supernova phase and birthed a black hole that consumed all of the platform’s equity capital” added Pepper when prodded for additional qualifications that might differentiate this platform from the 42 other similar platforms launched or announced in the span of the last 12 months. “Our core strategy this [fourth] time around with another platform is to avoid complete capital destruction. Hence the inspiring name PhotonLumenFlux, which is reminiscent of light trying to escape the grasp of infinite gravity. We are humbled and profoundly grateful to the strong and innovative team at SWP for the opportunity to see if we can IPO or SPAC this thing before any real value has been created.”
According to the company announcement, PhotonLumenFlux has not yet shared any specific locations being targeted for development acquisition, primarily due to the fact that for a private-equity backed platform with a targeted 5-7 year hold period, starting greenfield development in all US markets at this point is, tragically, almost pointless as a result of the 5-7 year delays in the basic interconnection requests being processed.