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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter 2007 Spire Corporation Investor Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) On the call with us today is Roger Little, the Chairman and CEO of Spire Corporation; Christian Dufresne, the Chief Financial Officer of Spire Corporation; and Mark Little, CEO of Spire Medical. I would now like to turn our call over to Christian Dufresne. Please go ahead, sir.
CD
Christian Dufresne
Management
Thank you, Joe, and good afternoon everyone. If you have not received a copy of our fourth quarter news release, which was issued today after the market close, or would like to be added to our contact list, please contact Sherryl Merrill Associates at (617) 542-5300. The news release also is posted on Spire’s website at www.spirecorp.com. Before we begin, please note that the various remarks that we may make on this conference call about the company’s future expectations, plans, prospects, constitutes forward-looking statements for the purposes of the Safe Harbour Provisions under the Private Security Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on the current release and expectations of management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by these forward-looking statements as the result of various factors, including those described in our annual and quarterly reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Spire’s Chairman and CEO, Roger Little.
RL
Roger Little
Management
Thanks, Christian. Sorry for the light on the—but our 2007 year-end results as I show on the press release were very good. We’re very pleased with them. We had an outstanding year, both operationally and financially. But before we get into the specifics, we wanted to—since it’s only our second call—we wanted to review some of our background a bit, to make sure all our listeners get a sense of where we’re coming from. We’ve been manufacturing solar energy equipments since 1980. We are the guys that make the machines that make the modules. We pioneered the concept of turn-key solar factories and we believe that more than 80% of the solar modules made today use some of our equipment. We’ve sold production lines and equipment customers numbering more than 200 and 50 countries worldwide. Our approach is to provide turn-key factories. These factories include all the manufacturing equipment, materials, technology and support to put a customer into the photovoltaic manufacturing business. So we put you in the business and we keep you in the business and we work to expand customers, production capacity, as well as, to backward integrate them. We start with modules and we are prepared to provide solar lines and wafer lines to our customer base. We’ve been doing this longer than anyone else and we have led the market with all sorts of technology and innovations. We’ve had over $100 million worth of R&D supported by the Department of Energy over our years in this business. Our Spire brand’s known throughout the world. If anyone walks into starting a solar photovoltaic company, they usually end up here looking at what we can do for them. Along with our solar activities, however, we have two other operations. They have good prospects. Our Spire Semiconductor operations have…
CD
Christian Dufresne
Management
Thanks, Roger, and good afternoon everyone. Revenues in Q4 are worth $13 million, a 175% increase from the $5.1 reported for the fourth quarter of 2006. This rapid growth was yield by a 375% increase with the sales of the solar manufacturing equipment. For the twelve month period, revenues increased 91% to $38,500,000 in 2007, compared with $20.1 million in 2006. In addition, the company recorded a $2.7 million gain from the sale of limited rights to utilize our trademark, the income tax benefit of $877,000, an extraordinary gain of $1.3 million, net of tax, on its equity investment in its joint venture, Gloria Spire Solar, LLC. Gross margins improved considerably for the fourth quarter, increasing to 25.6%, compared to 10.2% in the last year’s fourth quarter. The year-over-year improvement and margin in the quarter show an upward trend as we expect to see continued improvement now that we’ve completed the expansion of manufacturer build-out and our work floor that settled into the new space in their new town. The twelve-month period gross margin was $18.6 in 2007, compared to $11.3 in 2006. The Selling General and Administration Expenses was $4 million, or 31%, of the total revenue in the fourth quarter, compared with $2.5 million, or 49%, of the total revenue in the fourth quarter of 2006. For the twelve-month period of 2007, SG&A was $13.2 million, or 34%, of total revenue, compared to $9.7 million, or 48%, in total revenue for the twelve months of 2006. We expect that SG&A will continue to decline as the percentage of revenue of sales continue to grow. We have increased our sales force and marketing efforts in our solar equipment production product lines. Income from Operations was a loss $718,000 for the fourth quarter, compared with a loss of $2.1 million…
RL
Roger Little
Management
Thank you, Christian. So you can see from the numbers, we did have a very good year and we kept four consecutive quarters of record revenues in sales for the year. For the year, the total sales almost doubled that of 2006. So this represented triple digit growth over the year 2006 mostly due to turnkey solar factories and manufacturing equipment. The dynamics of what’s going on in our marketplace are that in 2006, there was the emergence of a short supply of poly-silicon, the basic material which is used in making crystal and silicon modules. In several manufacturers hesitated in expanding capacity. However, as new capacity was announced throughout the world, people began to enter the business, new people, as well as, existing manufacturers. In anticipation of the poly-silicon availability increased and expanded their capacity. So today, we’re looking at our growing market in 2007. It grew substantially for capital equipment and turnkey factories and with the projections of the latter part of 2008 and 2009. Significantly, new poly crystal and silicon coming online, we expect that the market will continue to expand at what’s been reported as a 40-45% growth rate in 2007. And when the poly silicon reservoir dam breaks and the poly flows out, we expect that the cross poly silicon will drop from whether it’s now $400 per kilogram down to long-term supply contract values of $50-60 per kilogram. We expect that the price of modules will decline and this will drive the market even faster than it has been in the past. So, we’re anticipating significantly large market growth to continue all the way through 2009 and then to 2010. What’s required, of course, for the manufacturing to grow is capital equipment and we find ourselves in a position where we can be responsive…
OP
Operator
Operator
Our first question is from Brian Yerger with Jesup & Lamont. Please go ahead with your question.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: Good evening, gentlemen. Can you hear me?
CD
Christian Dufresne
Management
Yes.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: Okay, sorry about that. I just had a couple of questions on the back loan, just to try and clarify a little bit. Number one, what is the turn around from order to delivery for your equipment?
RL
Roger Little
Management
Generally, we try to get a turnkey factory out in six months. Module factories—we can do that, especially startup module factories, at a nominal production of twelve mega-watts per year. The larger factories we need to go to nine months and for cell factories we need to go to nine months but we do have a lot of activity here and a lot of machines being built. Our goal is to maintain those delivery schedules.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: Okay, great, so your percentage of customer deposits—we’re looking at 20-35% in terms of getting a view on your backlog—is the 20-35% a range of your required deposits or is that just the average of what you get in as you get the orders?
RL
Roger Little
Management
It’s the negotiated amount.
CD
Christian Dufresne
Management
But it ranges depending on the type of equipment and again the negotiation, so it ranges on a customer per customer basis.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: Okay, I got you. What is the percentage of that—let’s say customer deposit—applied backlog solar?
CD
Christian Dufresne
Management
Most of that is all solar except for a portion with respect to our bio-semiconductor.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: Okay, so a little bit on the semiconductor side. Okay. I guess just one other question and I’ll jump back in the queue. On the Gloria Solar JV, what’s the target size of a normal—I say you had one in the queue that was around 300 kilowatts—is that the normal size in which you’re looking for?
RL
Roger Little
Management
We’re bidding on a lot of different things but yeah, not all the way down, of course, getting this operation started. We’ll go down to 20 kilowatts and we are, on the other hand, positioning ourselves for some larger systems. We did bidding on a 20 mega-watt system with a PPA hookup so we’re building all that infrastructure now to compete for even larger systems.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: Okay, great. I guess one last question and I’ll jump back out. On the contract manufacturing side—do you have any backlog there yet? For the cells?
RL
Roger Little
Management
Oh, the concentrator stuff. Yes, we do have a significant backlog that we’re really pleased with the way it’s growing. And it will be a significant contributor to the revenue this year so yeah, we’re very pleased and as you may know, there’s a big show in Spain as we speak. There’s people there with a booth and all.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: Terrific. Okay, I’ll jump back in the queue. Thanks.
OP
Operator
Operator
Our next question is from Robert Littlehell with Bernstein’s. Please go ahead with your question.
Robert Littlehell - Bernstein’s: Hey, Roger and Christian. The Ino well, cumulatively speaking, is how much at this point?
CD
Christian Dufresne
Management
It’s around $6.4 million.
Robert Littlehell - Bernstein’s: And the demand for the concentrator systems is—is that also kind of more internationally skewed than domestically or you see more domestic interest?
RL
Roger Little
Management
That’s pretty much mostly domestic. It’s stimulated by the Department of Energy’s awards from the Solar American Initiative Program. They awarded a number of companies’ concentrator system programs and so we’re working mostly with domestic suppliers, although I would say it’s we’re at one-third international and domestic for crystal and silicon. We’re probably 20% international for concentrators.
Robert Littlehell - Bernstein’s: Great. Thank you.
OP
Operator
Operator
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. The next question is from Akshay Kuvari with SVL Capital. Please go ahead with your question.
AC
Akshay Kuvari - SVL Capital
Analyst
Good evening, guys. Company’s had a good quarter. I had a question again on the backlog number. Tell me if I’m doing my math wrong here but you said the consumer deposit are $23 million and you are typically take about one-third of the total project and you finish it within a year. Are you expecting any revenues going forward in 2008?
RL
Roger Little
Management
You’re doing your math correctly.
AC
Akshay Kuvari - SVL Capital
Analyst
Okay, and I just have a question on the solar business again. Is it possible to get the gross margin on that business?
CD
Christian Dufresne
Management
We don’t report it out and it is contained in the—I don’t have it reported out.
AC
Akshay Kuvari - SVL Capital
Analyst
Okay, and one last question regarding the numbers on the customer concentration of this year in the quarter?
RL
Roger Little
Management
Customer concentration—I’m not sure what that means.
CD
Christian Dufresne
Management
Generally, if you’re looking at RK, we did have one customer that was about 15% and the way we would also describe it is that on a customer concentration, we had two countries that really dominated the solar, and that was Spain and Taiwan.
AC
Akshay Kuvari - SVL Capital
Analyst
Okay. Perfect. Thanks, guys.
OP
Operator
Operator
Our next question is from Adam Hutt from Leviticus Partners. Please state your question.
AP
Adam Hutt - Leviticus Partners
Analyst
Hi guys. Congratulations on a decent quarter. Biomedical—I don’t think anybody addressed that—any potential contracts to talk about? There’s got to be something good happening there and the potential to spit it off. Any progress in this area?
ML
Mark Little
Analyst
Adam, I’m Mark Little. How are you?
AP
Adam Hutt - Leviticus Partners
Analyst
Hi, Mark.
ML
Mark Little
Analyst
Nothing reported as of yet. We’re looking at our strategic options when it comes to both sides of business. One of the things I report on the capital side is we feel good about the growth. I think we showed about a 20% growth year-to-year on the capital side of our business. The challenge that we have with that is we have 8% of our business coming from 20% of our sales force. The 20% of the sales force that’s doing well is doing really well. We get a 50% increase from all of those decent distributors. It’s all about just trying to find solutions for the areas that aren’t doing so well. So, we’re looking at that and we’re trying to discover any strategic opportunities outside of just improving the business in general.
AP
Adam Hutt - Leviticus Partners
Analyst
Gotcha. Thank you, Mark.
OP
Operator
Operator
Once again, if you’d like to ask a question, please press *1 on your telephone keypad. The next question is from Brian Yerger with Jesup & Lamont. Please go ahead with your question.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: Hi, guys. Moving back to solar for a second—I’m sure that everybody gets this question in front of you guys—when do you see the poly silicon supply loosening up from your advantage point?
RL
Roger Little
Management
Well, certainly it’s going to be a dam breaking in 2009. I think we’ll see some of it loosening up towards the end of the lake.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: Okay, so you did see some loosening towards the end of this year?
RL
Roger Little
Management
Yes.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: Okay, terrific, and obviously that’s going to help you out looking to 2009 and 2010. I guess that leaves my question to when we’re looking out a little bit further—very bullish on solar in general—but at a certain point everyone’s going to have kind of their equipment set up and ready to go. How do you see the equipment side of the business a little longer term—let’s say in 2010, a little bit further out?
RL
Roger Little
Management
Well, it’s going to be driven by the market, obviously, and we’ve seen the market has tremendous opportunity for growth. I think most of the market research people that focus on the German market and the Japanese market, but we see emerging markets in United Arab Republic and China’s got to do something, and even domestically, obviously, there’s a big opportunity here as soon as we get the federal tax credit to continue for more than a year. So, we’re very positive on the overall growth of the market and we think there are so many opportunities that are emerging, and that will drive the equipment market. Our job is to provide the world’s best equipment and be responsive for the customers and I’ll think we’ll be okay.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: Okay, great. Who would you consider your largest competitor on the equipment supply side?
RL
Roger Little
Management
It would be NPC in Japan.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: And they’re obviously penetrating these other merging markets also? Are you running into them in terms of your P’s and the little small quarters of the world?
RL
Roger Little
Management
We have the line share in the market for two start-ups because we offer such a broad package. They compete on individual pieces of equipment pretty aggressively but you know I told the sales guys here the other day—the end went from one tenth to 100 that we just cut our prices 10% so get out there and sell. That’s what I believe that our weakened dollar position is a tremendous advantage for us in competing with NPC and anybody like that.
Brian C. Yerger – Jesup & Lamont: I gotcha. Thanks a lot.
OP
Operator
Operator
Our next question is from Pana Kalogeropoulos with Eaton Vance. Please go ahead with your question.
PV
Pana Kalogeropoulos - Eaton Vance
Analyst
Hi guys. How’re you doing? Congratulations on a great quarter. I just have a couple of questions. I was wondering, first of all, in terms of customers in Taiwan for example, or any region where you have more than one customer or looking to get more than one customer, do you see any customers luring you to other people that might be interested?
RL
Roger Little
Management
Yeah, we think that happens all the time. Taiwan—let me think—yeah, in fact we received an order here the other day as a result of a recommendation to this new company from a company we provided a module line to, so can’t ask why they would do that in a competitive world but it does occur.
PV
Pana Kalogeropoulos - Eaton Vance
Analyst
Okay, great, and another question I had was regarding servicing the lines you put in and keeping them going, do you think that you’re going to have to build out your service and support infrastructure a little more, maybe hire more people for that?
RL
Roger Little
Management
We did. We hired almost 75 people last year which included five or six new service people, so we have eight service people that work out of here. We’re also looking very seriously at an office of our own which includes service in the Pacific rim, and the factory just hired an individual who was an ex-Patriot of Taiwan, who is being trained here and his direction is to go back to Taiwan and run a Spire office which includes service out of Taiwan.
PV
Pana Kalogeropoulos - Eaton Vance
Analyst
Okay, so then when you provide service for a customer in Spain, for example, it’s being done by people who are based out of the US?
RL
Roger Little
Management
Yes, that’s correct. In Germany, we do have a stronger presence—our representative in Germany has also service capabilities and we have service companies out of Singapore, but most of it comes out of the US.
PV
Pana Kalogeropoulos - Eaton Vance
Analyst
Okay, and then one last question. You mentioned the US market and you’re waiting for the investment tax credit to be extended. I was wondering what sort of indications of interest have you gotten from our potential customers because, obviously, the US market could be pretty big for you guys?
RL
Roger Little
Management
Well, it’s huge. I think the activities in marketing in that arena are substantial. I think, as you know, if you can’t get the system in before the end of the year, however, you don’t get the tax credit. So, it’s like another dam being built there and we anticipate that dam to break with the people in Washington. We expect it will be extended another year or two before it expires, but we really need it for a longer period than that. And, we expect that will happen next year.
PV
Pana Kalogeropoulos - Eaton Vance
Analyst
So, if we got only a one year extension, that wouldn’t be enough for customers to have visibility enough start ordering?
RL
Roger Little
Management
Well, no, I wouldn’t say that. It wouldn’t improve the marketing situation but obviously, if we got a ten year or an eight year extension, it’ll make a big difference.
PV
Pana Kalogeropoulos - Eaton Vance
Analyst
Okay, great.
RL
Roger Little
Management
A year will help.
PV
Pana Kalogeropoulos - Eaton Vance
Analyst
Great. Thanks a lot.
OP
Operator
Operator
Our next question is from Akshay Kuvari with SVL Capital. Please state your question.
AC
Akshay Kuvari - SVL Capital
Analyst
Thanks. Just got a follow up to—trying to understand the margin a little better. Is it possible to break down for the quarter the revenues that come from sales, manufacturing, and the resource services?
CD
Christian Dufresne
Management
I was about to say that our research R&D was only 3% for the entire year so it was very small percentage of our revenue.
AC
Akshay Kuvari - SVL Capital
Analyst
Okay, and the margins are pretty impressive this quarter or 25%. Do you expect to maintain that for next year? And if you look at the margins from sales manufacturing, is that a good proxy for the solar margins?
RL
Roger Little
Management
Yes, that’s what it is and I think you just about got it right. We expect it to improve because we feel that we’re in the overhead structure. As the sales base increases, that overhead structure will not increase proportionately so we have a very low overhead structure. So, it should lead to better margins than what we’ve just experienced. So I think we’re on the right track.
AC
Akshay Kuvari - SVL Capital
Analyst
Okay, because I was looking at the last few quarters and it has been all over the place. So, just wanted to see how it’s going to be maintained over the next year.
CD
Christian Dufresne
Management
Well, we’re planning on having this level of margin for the next year.
AC
Akshay Kuvari - SVL Capital
Analyst
Great. Thanks a lot, guys. I appreciate it.
OP
Operator
Operator
At this time, we have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the conference call back over to management for any closing or additional remarks.
RL
Roger Little
Management
I think we covered what we wanted to cover. I do recommend people to take a look at our website and go to that link to hear more detail about view of the market growth the equipment needs, and our product pipeline. Other than that, we thank you for your attention and we look forward to speaking with you when we report out the first quarter. Thank you very much.
OP
Operator
Operator
And that concludes our conference call. Thank you for joining us today.