Mark Widmar
Analyst · ROTH Capital Partners
Thank you, Alex. Turning to slide seven, I would like to begin by providing an update on our CuRe program. Over five years ago, we announced the acceleration of our Series 6 transition, which transformed our manufacturing process and significantly increased our module wattage. While the outcome of the Series 6 program has been a great success, as reflected by our record 22 gigawatt backlog as of the end of 2021, it is easy to lose sight of the initial challenges we faced when scaling high volume manufacturing with respect to module wattage, throughput and manufacturing yield. Through persistence, resilience and ingenuity, our manufacturing associates methodically resolved these challenges, enabling Series 6 to be the success as is today. Looking forward, CuRe represents an anticipated enhancement to our module performance, which is expected to increase efficiency and lifecycle energy. On the November earnings call, we indicated that we had demonstrated CuRe’s for performance entitlements in a lab setting and are working to realize the entitlement in high volume manufacturing conditions. As a result, we have revised our integration schedule to lead line implementation by the end of Q1 2022 with fleet-wide replication timing to be determined upon completion of the lead line. Since the previous earnings call, we have conducted a series of CuRe runs on high volume production lines in Ohio. And while the trends are for improving module wattage and degradation appear favorable, we are still working to realize the full performance entitlement in high volume manufacturing conditions. Over the coming weeks, we intend to conduct further testing, which we believe will informed our views on lead line implementation timing. Again, this lead line implementation timing will in turn inform fleet-wide replication timing. As highlighted on our Q2 2021 earnings call, our technology team continues to create new optionality in our technology roadmap. This optionality enables us to partially mitigate the effects of CuRe delays through the enhancement of our current Series 6 technology with our top production bin reaching 465 watts at our Ohio and Malaysia factories. In addition to this improved efficiency and module wattage, Series 6 now has a significantly improved long-term degradation rate. Using the improvement metrology to measure degradation at our test sites, and further validated by third-party analytic methods and customer site data, the current Series 6 platform now has a 30-year warranted power output degradation rate of 0.3% per year, which is 40% below our previous warranted and represents a potential 4.4 increase in life cycle energy. While the improved Series 6 nameplate wattage allows us to achieve our targeted exiting 2021, with a top production bin of 460 to 465 watts, the expected overall lifetime energy performance of the current Series 6 program remains under that of CuRe, primarily due to differences in warranted degradation rate and temperature coefficient. That said, looking into 2022, we believe there is a path for Series 6 module to increase the top production bin to 470 watts with an upside potential of 475 watts exiting the year. Furthermore, we are also working on our Series 6 modules, under the current program, to achieve a temperature coefficient similar to what is expected under our CuRe program. I’ll discuss additional optionality in our technology roadmap, including bifaciality and opportunities to drive to higher levels of efficiency later in the call. While CuRe implementation has been delayed, the significant improvements in efficiency and degradation of Series 6 has been beneficial to more closely meet our customers’ expectations. In connection with our CuRe obligations this year, as discussed on our November earnings call, we have either mandate or in an advanced stage negotiation to amend certain customer contracts utilizing CuRe technology by substituting our enhanced Series 6 product. We expect these amendments to impact 2022 revenue and gross margin by approximately $60 million, which is reflected in our guidance. Note, we are still working to finalize certain CuRe-related contract amendments, relative to our contracted backlog disclosure, approximately 40% of the 60 million is in our contracted backlog disclosure as of December 31, 2021. The balance will be reflected once the remaining contract amendments are completed. These amendments coupled with the existing and forecasted improvements to our current Series 6 program related to efficiency, module wattage degradation rate, and temperature coefficient, as well as other potential enhancements under our technology roadmap, which I will discuss momentarily, have reduced the requirements to implement our CuRe program by a particular deadline. Looking into 2022, we are pleased to enter the year with a record backlog and a growth plan well underway with capacity expansions in the US and India. However, 2022 is expected to be a challenging year from an earnings standpoint, both due to external factors and the near-term impact of factory startup costs associated with our growth plans. The most significant driver impacting the year is the freight market. Ocean freight costs for contracted volumes have risen 200% to 300% from pre-pedantic levels. With our recently concluded carrier negotiations, we expect our 2022 contracted freight rates to increase by more than 100% year-over-year. This compares to a pre pandemic historic annual percentage increase in the mid-to-upper single digits. At the same time, transit times have significantly increased and reliability and availability have significantly worsened, pushing more volume into a higher price spot market. Despite record profitability across the shipping industry, this situation currently shows no sign of improving in 2022. We increasingly are monitoring the growing calls for accountability. In particular, from Georgia Senator Warnock, who has demanded an investigation into the apparent price gouging of ocean carriers. We expect sales freight for 2022 to increase to approximately $0.05 a lot. This is a combination of contracting and premium rates. Year-on-year, we expect a better mix of contracts and premium rates but with the substantial increase in contract rates, we expect sales freight costs to increase by approximately $200 million to $240 million year-on-year. Note, our anticipated 2022 shipments were largely booked prior to the shocking increase in freight rates. Relative to our expectations at the time of the negotiation, the module ASP freight rates have more than doubled. Externally, there have been a number of events that have adversely impacted our module cost reduction roadmap. Firstly, the aforementioned freight market disruption has resulted in higher shipment costs for inbound raw materials. Secondly, the increase in inflation and commodities has both directly and indirectly affected our bill of materials and costs of production. The cost of aluminum, which has increased over 40% between the start and end of 2021, has been a strong headwind against our module costs. We have partially offset this headwind by implementing our Series 6 Plus at our Malaysia and US factories, which reduced the aluminum content of our frames by 10%. Thirdly, COVID-19 constraints including travel quarantine restrictions for both First Solar associates and third-party equipment installers have impacted the timing of our Series 6 Plus and throughput upgrades in Vietnam. While we are expecting to see a loosening of travel restrictions this year, this uncertainty present ongoing risks to the timing of upgrades at our labs factory in Vietnam to Series 6 Plus, which is expected to be completed in early Q2. COVID-related constraints has also delayed the fleet rollout of our glass optimization program. As mentioned previously, our 2021 cost per watt declined by 6% versus our target of 11%. The shortfall reflective of the items noted above resulted in us missing our cost per watt target reduction by approximately $0.01 per watt. While we expect to continue to improve our cost per watt in 2022, we will not be able to offset a number of the headwinds experienced in 2021. And therefore, our module costs will be higher than our roadmap by approximately $0.01 per watt. This expected to negatively impact 2022 gross margin by approximately $100 million. While, there are better sources for expert perspectives on the most recent activities in Ukraine and Russia, and the resulting invocation on geopolitics, from our perspective, we are watching closely the tragic events unfold. As of today, our supply chain has not been impacted by the crisis and we have no current tier one suppliers in the conflict area. It is reasonable to anticipate natural volatility and various supply markets such as metals or fuel, should the conflict continue to escalate. We will continue to monitor this situation daily. Internally, the current limitation delays and the expected module wattage improvements will adversely impact our expected cost per watt reductions. And finally, capacity growth decisions made in 2021 will provide long-term benefits in 2023 and beyond, but provide a headwind to the 2022 P&L starts due to startup expenses of $85 million to $90 million. We will continue to navigate these headwinds with a focus on the future. As we invest in realizing the full value of our differentiated thin film technology, this pivotal year will evolve around continuing significant investments in R&D, new products, manufacturing expansion, and employing new contracting strategies, all of which we believe will set the stage for sustained growth in 2023a And beyond. As relates to R&D, our team has been cultivating optionality and our roadmap across energy attributes, including efficiency, degradation, temperature coefficient, and bifaciality, along with product attributes, including Series 7. More specifically, on the Q2 2021 earnings call, we highlighted that we are deploying prototypes of early stage bifacial cad-tel modules at our test facility and we’re pleased with the initial results. Since then, we have continued to run performance tests on both our current and CuRe device platforms, and has gathered more field data, with the results implying the potential for an increase in specific energy. Adding bifaciality on cad-tel adds to the well-understood and valued temperature coefficient, spectral response, and partial shading and long-term degradation energy advantages. With a mid-term target of a 490 watt bifacial module, we’re working diligently to commercialize this technology across our future platforms. We believe the commercial and financial perspective, prospects of bifacial cad-tel are compelling due to the anticipated higher energy yield with limited CapEx or retooling required in order to integrate a transparent back contact across the fleet. Turning to Slide 8, as it relates to expansion, construction of our Series 7 factories is underway and the schedules are on track, with the US factory expected to commence initial production in the first half of 2023 and the India factory by the end of 2023. Once scaled, these factories are expected to lead the fleet in terms of module wattage, efficiency and cost per watt. With a mid-term goal of 570 watt by monofacial Series 7 module, we see the potential for meaningful improvement in our module performance. As we significantly increase our nameplate capacity, we believe this anticipated growth when balanced with liquidity and profitability will drive contribution margin expansion, given our operating expense cost structure is 80% to 90% fixed. As a reflection of this expansion roadmap and continued optimization of the existing Series 6 fleet, we have summarized our expected exit nameplate capacity in production for 2022, 2023, and 2024 on Slide 9. As it relates to our contracting strategy, a feature of our newer framework agreements is the customers entering into a contract today can benefit from the potential realization of our technology roadmap. For approximately 7.3 gigawatts of bookings secured prior to the end of the calendar year, we’ve structured the ASP and product expectations on a baseline wattage and energy performance roadmap without the full anticipated benefits of our technology roadmap. To the extent, we realized future module technology improvements including new product design and energy enhancements beyond what is specified in the baseline agreement, the incremental value is expected to result in a corresponding increase ASP. Our ability to contract in this manner provides our customers with clarity of pricing, product availability and delivery timing enabling them to underwrite PPAs from position of strength, with lower risk to the expected project returns. From our perspective, there is also strategic rationale to contract in this manner, as it provides us confidence in our ability to sell through our expected supply and provides visibility into an expected profit per watt with the potential for meaningful upside to the extent we realize these anticipated technology improvements. This framework allows us to understand the price certainty, the value of our investments across different product enhancements. Based on these potential technology improvements, there’re approximately 7.3 gigawatts of contracted module volumes as of December 31, 2021, such adjustments if realized could result in additional revenue of up to 22 billion, majority of which would be recognized in 2023. Note this contracting approach has been incorporated in our 2022 bookings year-to-date. From a sales freight contracting perspective, last year, we began employing module contract structures, which mitigate our exposure to sales freight. As we continue to look in two to four years into the future, these arrangements provide a balanced risk profile for us and our customers, where we are incentivized to minimize sales freight costs that generally provide a cap above which customers are obligated to pay. We started employing these structures in Q2 2021 and approximately one-third of our expected 2022 volume includes the provisions. In 2023 and beyond, we anticipate a significant majority of volume will include these types of provisions. Across our contracted backlog, these contracts provide greater clarity into an expected gross profit per watt, thus providing freight relief through a hiring ASP, if rates remain above pre-pandemic levels. In addition to our contracting approach, our expansion strategy, including our third Ohio plants and our new India plant are expected to further de-risk our exposure to transoceanic freight costs by bringing manufacturing closer to demand. At the factory scale, our production mix exposed to transoceanic freight risk is expected to decrease by approximately 30 percentage points between 2022 and 2024. Overall, from a pricing perspective, the strong demand we are witnessing for our differentiated cad-tel module has enabled us to secure 10.7 gigawatts of bookings for planned deliveries in 2023, at a baseline ASP that is only $0.003 below our planned deliveries in 2022. It is important to note that ASP is essentially composed of two components, the module plus sale freight. The baseline ASP generally assumes sales freight will be approximately $0.025 per watt. To the extent that the actual sales freight is above the baseline, the ASP will increase to cover most of, if not all of, the incremental sales freight. When including this variable pricing adjustment, and assuming 2022 sales freight environment, we expect our 2023 sales freight adjusted ASP to be approximately $0.01 higher than 2022 on a like basis. In addition, as we secure the significant volume for delivery in 2023, we have been employing a contracting strategy which enables our customers to benefit from the evolution of our technology and product platform. Realizing the entirety of the benefit of this platform will increase our baseline ‘23 ASP by up to $0.02 cents a lot. Turning to Slide 10, we continue to see active customer engagement and high levels of interest in both individual projects, as well as a multi-year and multi-gigawatt agreements across key markets in the United States and India. Our total bookings opportunities of 53.6 gigawatts remain very robust, with 27.7 gigawatts in the mid to late stage customer engagement. This opportunity set coupled with our contracted backlog gives us confident as we continue scaling our manufacturing capacity. Incrementally we continue to evaluate the potential for future capacity expansion. As referenced on the Q3 earnings call, we have started to engage with certain suppliers to ensure we have line of sight on critical path tools for further expansion. We believe strong demand for our cad-tel modules, a dynamic technology roadmap, a strong balance sheet, and largely fixed operating expense cost structure are each catalyst, as we evaluate expansion. While this potential expansion may be in the US, India or beyond, we are seeking clarity on domestic solar policies to ensure such expansion is well positioned. Note, we have made no such decision at this time and any capacity expansions are unlikely to contribute to our 2023 production plan. I’ll turn the call back over to Alex who will discuss the financial outlook and provide 2022 guidance.