“I have never made a PowerPoint,” the CEO of Solaria, Arturo Díaz-Tejeiro, recently acknowledged before the students of the faculty where he studied, Industrial Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM). What I came to present to you was the trajectory of an unusual company, which has learned from its mistakes and which has reached the Ibex without giving up a particular management style: “I don’t have a computer nor do I have an office, and I could almost say that I don’t have an agenda.” . We don’t normally make presentations with PowerPoint. “We like direct contact more.”
The Solaria case deserves attention for this aspect and many others. For now, the CEO is an enthusiast of entrepreneurship, renewable energy, the public university and the company that he founded in 2005 with his family and that is today chaired by his father, Enrique Díaz-Tejeiro. “We are here to try to do extraordinary things” and “I am convinced that Solaria will become the largest company in Spain,” he assured the students. The title of his presentation at the UPM could not be more eloquent: “From the Polytechnic to the Ibex.”
Between the days in which Díaz-Tejeiro recruited among his colleagues the UPM students who would end up directing the company and the jump to the selective one in which the largest corporations in the country are listed, many things have happened. The photovoltaic company went public in 2007, reached a value of 2,000 million, then suffered the economic crisis, had to close its solar panel factory in La Mancha and cut its price to 50 million. “They told us that there was no way to resuscitate the patient and I said that in four years we would be in the Ibex.” He was not wrong: Solaria rose from the ashes as a producer of renewable electricity.
It now capitalizes around 1,850 million euros and, above all, marks the pace of the photovoltaic sector. It is the representative on the Ibex of a type of energy that has gone from living off subsidies to being competitive. It has a portfolio to develop photovoltaic projects of 14,200 megawatts (MW), almost double those installed in Spain, and has the goal of reaching 18,000 in 2030.
The group has also just delivered a coup that will boost its growth. It has signed a financing agreement with the European Investment Bank (EIB) for 1.7 billion euros that will allow it to build 120 photovoltaic plants in Spain, Italy and Portugal with a combined power of 5,600 MW.
Last Thursday, the company held its Capital Market Day in London, once again a declaration of intent. He did so to announce, among other things, that he will invest 2.6 billion in Europe in the next three years, with which to take advantage of the new wave of photovoltaic energy installation.
The strategic plan, the president of the company, Enrique Díaz-Tejeiro, indicated to investors, runs until 2030 and has three fundamental pillars: “creation of value in the photovoltaic sector, expansion in key European markets and hybridization with wind technology.” .
The company also took the opportunity to present its results for the first half of the year, which were good and gave it an 8% rise in the stock market during the day. It earned 50 million euros, 15% more, after increasing income by 32%, to 99 million.
The founding family maintains 34.9% of the capital and continues to direct the company with its particular management style. International firms such as the Norwegian fund, Blackrock, Natixis, Invesco and DWS also participate in the capital.
“A good part of Solaria’s business plan was born in the UPM bar. We discussed a lot about entrepreneurship, about doing new things and about renewables. I had the dream of creating a solar energy company that would change the world and my family had the same vision,” explained the CEO at his former college.
He also made a confession and a prediction. The confession: the failures of his university years are now a life lesson. The prediction: “We are going to star in the next industrial revolution. In five years, there will be a brutal expansion of solar energy everywhere. “We are going to displace oil.”
