Peck Electric Co., a South Burlington commercial solar engineering, procurement and construction company, has changed its name and gone public after becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of a company called Jensyn Acquisition Group in Freehold, New Jersey.
In doing so, Peck becomes the fifth publicly traded company based in the state. Officials from Peck were due to ring the closing bell at NASDAQ in New York City on Tuesday afternoon, said Cory Ziskind, the managing director of a public relations firm working for Peck.
Jensyn’s stockholders approved the merger in late June, that company said in a prepared statement. As a result, Peck Electric on June 20 changed its name to Peck Company and started trading on the NASDAQ under the symbol “PECK,” the company said.
Jeffrey Peck, the company’s owner and CEO, will continue in his leadership role, the two companies said.
In a presentation to investors in May, Peck Electric Co. said it is the largest commercial solar contractor in the Northeast, with about 100 employees and about $27 million in revenues. The company says in its materials that it was founded in 1972 and started to focus on solar in 2013. It has built about 100 megawatts of solar systems since its inception, and is responsible for about a third of the solar installations in Vermont, the presentation said.
Peck said on its website that it has traditionally operated only in Vermont, but plans to expand into other New England states and New York, the largest regional market. The company has labor relationships with electrical workers in other states, it said. About 70% of the company’s revenue is derived from the solar business, Peck said on its website. About 30% comes from its electrical and data business, and less than 1% from its own solar arrays.
The presentation said the future of solar in the Northeast is strong, with nine of the 10 highest-ranked states for solar array installation in the region.
“Immediate plans are to begin expanding into the surrounding Northeast states to capture growth,” the company said in its presentation.
The agreement with Jensyn was initially signed in February, the presentation said.
“Small private companies like Peck don’t often have an opportunity to participate in a NASDAQ IPO, particularly in an era of high-priced “unicorns” where it where it may be difficult for investors at or after the IPO to benefit from future growth,” Peck said in its presentation to investors.
The other Vermont-based public companies are Casella Waste Management in Mendon; Union Bankshares, the holding company for Union Bank in Morristown; Community Bankcorp. in Derby; and Middlebury National Corp., the holding company for the National Bank of Middlebury. Jensyn is known as a special-purpose acquisition corporation, or SPAC, which raises capital through an initial public offering for the purposes of buying a company.
“It’s a more efficient route for companies like Peck to go public,” Ziskind said.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of publicly traded companies based in Vermont. There are five.
