SNEL11 pays 16% a year, but solar plants wear out: what is inside the fund and how long the income lasts

SNEL11 is, in practice, a solar-only fund. About two thirds of its net assets are photovoltaic plants, either operating or being acquired. The other third is cash from the 2026 offering waiting to become plants. And the R$ 0.10 monthly payout, about 16% a year at today's unit price, is not yet covered by plant rent alone: in the third quarter, net rent covered 44% of what was distributed.

Where the unitholder starts

SNEL11 (Suno Energias Limpas FII) has paid R$ 0.10 per unit every month for 28 months in a row, since June 2024. With the unit at R$ 7.30 on Nov 11, 2026, that is a yield of about 16.4% a year (simple math: R$ 1.20 ÷ R$ 7.30), income-tax exempt for individuals in Brazil. The fund trades at 0.91 times book value (NAV of R$ 7.99 per unit on 09/30) and scores 8.16 in our analysis.

But the portfolio is confusing. The report shows almost half of net assets in "plants" and a large block in "REIT units". It looks like a fund that is half energy, half fund of funds. It is not.

What each piece of the portfolio really is

According to the September 2026 Monthly Report, net assets stood at R$ 1.815 billion. This is how they break down:

Source: September 2026 Monthly Report and 3Q26 Quarterly Report. The total is slightly above 100% because the fund has about R$ 37 million in liabilities (distributions payable and installments on plant purchases).

The "REIT units" are not other real estate funds

This is where the confusion lies. None of these units belongs to a third-party REIT, office, warehouse or mall fund. They are three vehicles created by Suno itself:

• FII Holding Projetos: an exclusive SNEL fund with no management fee of its own. It owns FII Projetos Maduros, which holds the plants leased to NUV Energia (Carmo, Pains, Catena, Malbec, Angra, Mundo Melhor, São Bento do Abade, Liberdade) and the Pirassununga plant. It is 100% solar energy.
• Liquidez Projetos GD FII: also has a single unitholder, SNEL. It parks cash in CRIs, Treasury bonds and a small slice of other REITs. Management itself described it as a vehicle "aiming to earn a return on cash while the funds are not used for acquisitions".
• Atlas FIM: a closed-end multimarket fund managed by Suno, whose only unitholders are SNEL and the liquidity fund. We could not find its holdings in any public document.

Our calculation, as % of September 2026 net assets (the total exceeds 100% because of liabilities): solar = SPVs + surface rights + Holding; cash = Atlas + liquidity fund + fixed income + CRI. "Already generating rent" = listed operating plants (~17%) + Holding (~13%), on the R$ 1.89 billion base of the management report.

In other words, SNEL11's diversification is geographic (plants in several states and with nine utilities), not by sector. Whoever buys the fund is buying a single thesis: distributed solar energy.

Is it really solar?

Yes. All 66 plants listed in the September report are photovoltaic, distributed generation, almost all between 1 and 7 MWp. Under Brazilian rules this is mini-generation, not rooftop panels on a house. The bylaws would allow wind and hydro, but today there is no asset from those sources.

Why there is so much idle cash

In 2026 the fund ran its 5th offering. The cap was R$ 1.84 billion and it raised R$ 1.007 billion, about 53% of the base amount. Net assets nearly doubled: there were 110.7 million units in January and 227 million in September. One detail stands out: existing unitholders exercised only R$ 1 million of their preemptive rights. Investment funds took 45% of the new units, and companies related to the fund or to the distribution syndicate took 26%.

The money has not yet turned into plants. On 09/30 there were R$ 594 million in cash and R$ 679 million in assets "being acquired". In September, management announced the purchase of 29 projects (116.7 MWp) for R$ 565 million, with a projected return of 16.87% a year above energy inflation, but ownership only passes to the fund once the contract conditions are met.

Who pays the rent, and how

The fund does not sell energy. It leases the plant to a company (an energy trader or consortium), which splits the energy credits among consumers, who get a discount on their power bill. There are two types of contract:

• Take or pay (20% of operating capacity): fixed rent for the capacity, whether the plant generates a lot or a little.
• Compensated (56%): rent varies with occupancy, that is, with how much of the energy the trader managed to sell to customers.
• The other 23% of capacity has no defined contract in the September report.

Concentration is high. NUV Energia accounts for 43% of operating capacity and 56% of the contracted portion, always under compensated contracts. In April (the last month the report showed this table), average occupancy at four NUV plants in ramp-up was 38.7%. After that, the reports stopped publishing occupancy.

The fund has already changed tenants at several plants: Lemon left Petrolina and Setta came in; CMU left Itabira (with a R$ 2.63 million penalty paid in 30 installments) and Serena came in; Matrix left Catena and Malbec for "poor commercial performance" and NUV came in; Enercooper left Matozinhos 1, with debts and a penalty under collection, and Ultra came in. So far, every plant has been re-leased. But the Itabira appraisal fell 12% after the switch, and 26% of capacity has contracts expiring in 2030.

Does the R$ 0.10 come from the plants?

Not yet. Separating what comes from plant rent from what comes from the return on cash, the math based on the September management report (our calculation) looks like this:

In September, plant rent yielded R$ 0.04 per unit. The rest of the R$ 0.10 came from the return on cash and from gains on selling units inside the vehicles: the Quarterly Report records R$ 24.3 million of "gain on sale of assets" in the third quarter. In the same quarter, the accounting result was a loss of R$ 8.8 million. Over nine months, accounting profit was R$ 38 million versus R$ 111 million distributed, and book value per unit fell from R$ 8.216 (December) to R$ 7.993 (September).

Two things are fair to say. First, part of this gap is accounting marks between Suno's vehicles, not money that disappeared. Second, the imbalance is largely temporary: net assets doubled with the offering and the new money only earns rent once it becomes plants. Management says it will pay "no less than R$ 0.10" through December. But today, whoever receives the R$ 0.10 is receiving a lot of cash yield, not energy income.

The core question: do solar plants wear out?

Yes, and this is the most important difference between SNEL11 and a property fund. According to general industry benchmarks (not fund data), a photovoltaic panel carries a 25 to 30-year warranty and loses around 0.5% of output per year. The inverter, which converts the energy, is usually replaced after 10 to 15 years. A well-kept warehouse is still standing after 30 years and the land tends to be worth more. A plant at the end of its useful life is worth little: the equipment is old and replacing it tends to be cheaper, because panel prices keep falling.

At SNEL11, three facts reinforce this point:

• The land does not belong to the fund. The plants sit on land leased through surface rights, with terms of 25 to 30 years (examples: San Remo until 2048, Petrolina until 2053, Catena until 2050). When the term ends, so does the right to use the ground.
• The fund does not depreciate its plants. Directly held plants are valued by a cash-flow appraisal (11.5% annual discount rate), and those held in SPVs are carried at recent purchase cost. No public document shows the cash-flow horizon or the residual value at the end. That is why book value does not "age" on its own: it only changes when a new appraisal is made.
• There is no reserve to replace equipment. The bylaws provide only a generic contingency reserve of up to 5% of assets. The reports do not mention useful life, inverters or repowering. The only official mention is in the risk factors of FII Projetos Maduros, which cite "obsolescence", "performance degradation" and "possible need for reinvestment".

Contracts do not cover the plants' entire life either: the weighted average maturity is May 2041, about 14 and a half years ahead, and 26% of capacity expires in 2030.

How much of the dividend is "your capital coming back"

A simple calculation helps. It is only an illustration, not a fund figure. Assume the plant is worth zero in 25 years:

The logic is that of an income fund with an expiry date: it can pay well for many years, but it is not an asset that appreciates on its own, like land or a warehouse. Management's counterpoint is that contracts are adjusted by the energy tariff and that plants are bought at returns of 16% to 17% a year above energy inflation. If that return holds over the entire useful life, it pays for the wear. The problem is that unitholders cannot check this, because the appraisals are not public.

Insurance and maintenance

There is insurance: the Quarterly Report shows R$ 265.8 thousand in expenses on "insurance contracts on the fund's assets" in the third quarter of 2026. But the fund does not disclose what the policy covers: we do not know whether there is business-interruption cover (insurance that pays the income while the plant is down), civil liability, or the insured value per plant. The prospectus only says the policy has exclusions (war, terrorism) and lists as a risk the insurer refusing to renew.

Maintenance (O&M) is outsourced. In June 2026 the fund re-tendered the contract for six plants, with a 22.52% cost cut and a 12-month term, without disclosing the company's name. Manufacturer warranties on panels and inverters do not appear in the documents either.

What regulation may change

On the other hand, Law 15,269/2025 preserved the acquired rights of distributed generation, and energy tariffs rose above inflation in 2025 and 2026, which makes the discount offered by the traders more valuable.

Governance: what deserves attention

• Atlas FIM: 19.6% of net assets in a multimarket fund run by the manager itself, with no public holdings.
• Fees: an all-in fee of about 1.25% a year on net assets, plus a 20% performance fee on returns above IPCA + 7%. There is also a specialist consultant paid as a fund expense.
• Vehicle audit: the 06/30/2026 financial statements of FII Projetos Maduros (where NUV's plants sit) received a qualified opinion. The auditor had no access to audited accounts of an investee corporation that makes up 41% of that fund. SNEL's own 2025 accounts (PwC) were unqualified.
• Formal consultation with results due on Nov 11, 2026: it seeks approval for unit buybacks, for related-party transactions (including investing up to 100% of net assets in funds managed or administered by Suno/QI), for a mandatory tender offer by anyone reaching 10% of the units, and for a 10% voting cap per unitholder on sensitive matters.

How the fund has done so far

The management report shows +80% since listing, but measured from the offering price. For someone who bought on the first trading day (12/14/2023, R$ 8.00 adjusted for the 1-for-15 split), the math is different: through Nov 11, 2026, the unit at R$ 7.30 plus R$ 3.52 in distributions gives about +35% (our calculation), versus +43% for the CDI over the same period. Over 12 months, the unit fell from R$ 8.50 to R$ 7.30 and total return, including R$ 1.20 in distributions, was close to zero, versus about 14% for the CDI.

The investor base has grown a lot: 141,612 unitholders in September, versus 56,343 in October 2025. Average liquidity in September was R$ 7 million per day.

Verdict: who it is for

SNEL11 is a high-income fund with an economic expiry date, not a wealth-building fund. It makes sense for those who:

• want tax-exempt monthly income and accept that part of it is, at bottom, a return of capital, without expecting unit price gains over the long run;
• accept concentration in a single thesis (distributed solar energy) and in one large tenant (NUV);
• use the fund as a small slice of the portfolio.

It does not suit someone who wants a "property" that appreciates over time, nor someone buying because the P/B is below 1. SNEL11's book value is purchase cost and appraisal, not land that stays.

The test for the coming months is whether rent per unit rises to cover the R$ 0.10 once cash becomes plants. If the 16% to 17% IRR promised for the new acquisitions shows up in rent, the dividend stands on its own merit. If the cash runs out first, the R$ 0.10 becomes hard to sustain.

What to track every month

Updated figures, the score and the fund's fair price are in the full SNEL11 analysis.

Sobre o autor

Autor do artigo Edinei Bauer

Investidor e fundador do Rico aos Poucos.

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