Solar farm builder Lodestone Energy is sounding out investors for a possible share float on the NZX, a move that would make it the first sharemarket-listed company in New Zealand focused on large-scale solar generation.
The company announced on Monday that it was exploring an initial public offering and was inviting New Zealand residents to register their interest. No shares are on offer yet, no money is being sought, and registering does not commit anyone to buy. The registration website says pre-registration is open until 23 September 2026.
Chair Jack Matthews was careful to stress that the float is not a done deal. “No decision has been made on whether an IPO will proceed. At this stage, we are simply inviting people to register their interest so we can better understand the potential level of investor support,” he said.
Lodestone was founded in 2019 to bring utility-scale solar to the New Zealand electricity market. According to its announcement, it has since commissioned five solar farms with a combined 169 megawatts of panel capacity. It expects them to produce 266 gigawatt hours of electricity in their first year, which the company says is enough to power more than 33,000 homes. The farms are near Kaitaia, Edgecumbe, Whitianga, Waiotahe in the Bay of Plenty and Clandeboye in South Canterbury, according to Wikipedia’s list of its power stations.
The company does not just generate power. It also sells it, which in industry language makes it a “gentailer”, the same generator and retailer model used by Meridian, Contact, Mercury and Genesis. Managing director Gary Holden said the plan was to grow that model nationwide. “Our vision is to build a solar farm in every community and develop Lodestone Energy into a vertically integrated gentailer capable of serving customers across New Zealand,” he said.
Holden said any money raised would go into more farms and more customers. “If the IPO proceeds, the capital raised is intended to support the construction of additional solar farms, expansion of our customer base and general corporate purposes.”
To get a sense of Lodestone’s size, Newswire compared its expected output with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s annual electricity statistics. New Zealand generated 44,140 gigawatt hours of electricity in 2025. Lodestone’s 266 gigawatt hours would be about 0.6 percent of that. Against solar alone the company looks much bigger. MBIE estimates the country produced 959 gigawatt hours of solar power in 2025, counting rooftop panels as well as solar farms. Lodestone’s expected annual output equals about 28 percent of that total.
The same figures show how quickly solar is growing from a low base. MBIE’s solar estimate rose 66 percent in 2025, up from 578 gigawatt hours the year before, but solar still made up only about 2.2 percent of all the electricity New Zealand generated. The comparison is a rough one. Lodestone’s figure is a forecast for a full year with all five farms running, and its newest farm only began producing power in August.
That farm, at Clandeboye just north of Temuka, is Lodestone’s fifth and its first in the South Island. The company said on 6 August that the 27.7 megawatt site had reached first power after 12 months of construction and would be able to power around 6,000 homes once fully commissioned. At the same time it said it had begun building a sixth farm, a joint venture in Central Hawke’s Bay, and had more than 200 megawatts of solar either delivered or under construction. Its largest proposal, at Haldon Station in the Mackenzie Basin, received provisional fast-track approval in July.
Lodestone’s retail arm originally sold to large commercial customers but is now expanding in the North Island to serve homes and businesses, the company said in August. Its general manager of customer, Sarah McHardy, said then that the aim was to reach people who cannot put panels on their own roof. “It’s about making good value electricity more accessible for all, regardless of whether you can install a rooftop system.”
So far the company has been funded privately. RNZ reported that Lodestone has financed its developments through private capital raising of more than $500 million. It completed a $300 million capital raise in 2022, and its investors have included Xero founder Rod Drury, Trade Me founder Sam Morgan and The Warehouse founder Stephen Tindall, according to Wikipedia. RNZ also noted that if the share sale goes ahead it would be the first IPO on the NZX in five years, although a handful of companies have listed in that time to broaden their shareholder base or as local listings for overseas businesses.
Shares in stock exchange operator NZX rose 0.7 percent to $1.47 on Monday as Lodestone began testing investor interest, The Bottom Line reported. The big listed power companies had a mixed day. Mercury fell 2.1 percent to $6.55, Meridian rose 1.4 percent to $5.27, Contact gained 0.8 percent to $8.62 and Genesis was unchanged at $2.68.
Salt Funds Management managing director Matt Goodson told The Bottom Line his firm had not yet started looking at Lodestone, but that a quality IPO would be welcome on the local market. “You’ve always got to be cognisant of returns,” he said.
Solar farms are only part of the country’s solar story. Rooftop and other small local systems passed one gigawatt of capacity in May, according to Electricity Authority data Newswire analysed in July. Lodestone has pitched its retail power at people who cannot join that rooftop boom. Now it is pitching to investors as well.
Nothing is certain yet. Lodestone will use the registrations to judge demand before deciding whether to launch a formal offer. If it does, the offer will be made under the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013, the law that governs share offers to the public.
Would you buy shares in a solar farm company, or would you rather put the money into panels on your own roof? Tell us what you think in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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