Musk and Rive Brothers Buying $100 Million of SolarCity Bonds

(Bloomberg) -- Elon Musk and his cousins Lyndon Rive and Peter Rive are buying $100 million of solar bonds from their rooftop solar company, SolarCity Corp.

Musk is personally buying $65 million of bonds, San Mateo, California-based SolarCity said in a filing Tuesday. Lyndon Rive, SolarCity’s chief executive officer, and Peter Rive, its chief technology officer, are each buying $17.5 million.

“Musk is infusing even more of his money,” Nathan Serota, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, said Tuesday. “SolarCity is burning through a lot of cash and they need cash.” Musk is SolarCity’s chairman and largest shareholder. Lyndon Rive is the seventh-biggest shareholder and his brother is the eighth-biggest, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The bond purchase comes as Musk’s electric car company, Tesla Motors Inc. works to close its planned acquisition of SolarCity. The solar company approved the deal this month.

The company began offering the $124 million bond package on Aug. 17, according to a SolarCity filing. The 6.5 percent bonds will be senior unsecured obligations of the company, and will be due in February 2018.

SolarCity typically markets its so-called solar bonds to retail investors. One of the biggest buyers of the bonds is another Musk entity -- Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

“They were hoping to target impact investors,” Serota said. “That hasn’t happened.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Eckhouse in New York at beckhouse@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net, Will Wade, Susan Warren