(Reuters) -Solar firm SunPower said it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States and agreed to sell some of its business to Complete Solaria for $45 million in cash.
Shares of SunPower fell about 45% to 44 cents premarket on Tuesday after the company listed its assets and liabilities in the range of $1 billion to $10 billion, in a filing with the bankruptcy court in Delaware late on Monday.
"Although technically this bankruptcy process is Chapter 11 (restructuring) rather than Chapter 7 (liquidation), in effect it is a liquidation of SunPower," said Raymond James analyst Pavel Molchanov.
Molchanov expects the asset sale process to conclude by late 2024, after which "SunPower, which had been founded all the way back in 1985, will cease to exist."
SunPower has had a challenging few quarters after its CEO left in February and it received a subpoena from the U.S. securities regulator related to its accounting practices the same month.
The crisis deepened last month when the company said it was pausing several operations, including new product shipments and deactivating lease and purchase deals on its platform.
SunPower said it intends to continue a sale process for its remaining assets after it entered into a 'stalking horse' agreement with California-based Complete Solaria to sell its Blue Raven Solar and New Homes businesses, and its non-installing Dealer network.
A stalking horse bid is used as a starting or minimally accepted offer that other interested bidders must surpass if they want to buy the asset or the company.
SunPower had acquired Blue Raven for $165 million in 2021.
(Reporting by Mrinalika Roy and Mrinmay Dey in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich, Shailesh Kuber and Shinjini Ganguli)