Barron’s, a leading source of financial news, published exclusive coverage around Climate First Bancorp’s plans to go public in 2026 or 2027, “in what would mark a rare public-market debut by a U.S. bank.” In an exclusive interview with Barron’s senior writer Rebecca Ungarino, Climate First Bank Chief Executive Officer Lex Ford explained that “offering shares on the public market would help fund acquisitions as part of its growth strategy to reach $10 billion of assets by 2031.”

Climate First Bank’s IPO plans are newsworthy for a variety of reasons. First, it’s rare, as Barron’s reports in the article: “Just 4% of the 16,189 companies to go public in the U.S. between 1980 and 2024were banks and thrift institutions, according to data from Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida and an expert on IPO markets. Of the 2,054 IPOs between 2020 and 2024, just 19 were banks.”

Additionally, Climate First Bank specializes in financing solar projects, including commercial solar and battery storage, employee stock-ownership plans, and traditional term loans and credit lines.“Solar financing, one of Climate First’s core businesses, could be threatened by reduced demand stemming from the Trump administration eliminating tax-credit incentives to install solar panels. The Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group, lowered its base-case outlook for total solar deployments between 2025 and 2030 by 4%,” Ungarino writes. “Ford said Climate First has ‘never depended on the tax credit to build or grow its solar business—unlike many of the now-defunct fintechs in the space.’”

Climate First Bank leadership’s interest intaking the IPO route rather than a sale follows an experience with an earlier bank acquisition. “Prior to Climate First Bank, Ford was an executive at First Green Bank, which had $800 million in assets when Seacoast Banking Corp. of Florida bought it for $115 million in 2018. ‘What we experienced at the last bank on a sale was—every bit of our mission, backing, planning, was immediately gone at sale’…Ford said that if he ‘could decide, we would never sell.’”

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