Aftab Chaudhry’s SPAC to give investors pure play access to Pakistan’s solar boom

For Pakistan’s stock market, the solar boom has so far been everywhere and nowhere. It is visible on the roofs of textile mills, petrol pumps, shopping plazas, dairy farms, mosques, schools and upper-middle-class homes. It shows up in customs data, in shrinking grid demand, in the alarm of power-sector bureaucrats, and in the sudden popularity of lithium-ion batteries. Yet for investors at the Pakistan Stock Exchange, there has been no clean, simple way to buy into the trend. There are battery makers with solar-adjacent products, power companies adding renewable projects, and a nascent green energy modaraba. But there has not been a mainstream listed company whose principal business is importing solar equipment and installing solar systems for customers.

That may be about to change.

LSE SPAC-I Ltd, the special purpose acquisition company sponsored by the LSE group of companies, has approved the next step in its merger with Ningbo Green Light Energy Ltd, a Lahore-based solar energy solutions provider with Chinese supply-chain links. Under the scheme approved by the board of LSE SPAC-I, the shell company will be merged into Ningbo Green Light Energy, leaving Ningbo as the resultant listed entity. The transaction is still subject to the sanction of the Lahore High Court and the completion of applicable regulatory approvals. But if it goes through, Pakistan’s public equity market will have something it has lacked during one of the fastest energy shifts in the country’s history: a listed solar EPC and equipment-distribution business.