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SunPower Inc. (SPWR)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Fri, May 6, 2016

$0.83

-7.17%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to SunPower Corporation's First Quarter 2016 Results Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Bob Okunski, Vice President of Investor Relations-SunPower Corporation. Thank you, sir. You may now begin.

Robert Okunski - Senior Director-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Michelle. I'd like to welcome everyone to our First Quarter 2016 Earnings Conference Call. On the call today, we will start off with an operational review from Tom Werner, our CEO, followed by Chuck Boynton, our CFO, who will review our first quarter 2016 financial results. Tom will then discuss our outlook for Q2, as well as 2016. As a reminder, a replay of this call will be available later today on the Investor Relations page of our website. During today's call, we will make forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties that are described in today' Safe Harbor slide of today's presentation, today's press release, our 2015 10-K, and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Please see those documents for additional information regarding those factors that may affect these forward-looking statements. To enhance this call, we have also posted a set of PowerPoint slides which we will reference during this call on the Events & Presentations page of our Investor Relations website. In the same location, we have posted a supplemental datasheet detailing some of our historical metrics as well. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Tom Werner, CEO of SunPower, who will begin on slide four. Tom? Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Bob, and thank you for joining us today. I would like to start with a few short comments on SunPower's strategic position before discussing our Q1 2016 results. As we outlined at our Analyst Day last November, we've embarked on an ambitious plan to profitably grow our share of the global solar business by combining rapid expansion of our upstream P Series panel capacity with the unique benefits of our standardized complete system solutions. With our P Series technology now transitioning…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from Brian Lee. Your line is now open and please state your company name. Brian K. Lee - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Goldman Sachs. Hi guys, thanks for taking the questions. I just had two actually related questions on your residential business. So given the California exposure you had, just wanted to dig into this a little bit. Did you have any impact from the – or see any impact from the abnormal rain conditions this quarter out there on the West Coast? And just curious if it had any impact on installations or sales velocity i.e., would you have posted even better numbers in that segment without the seasonality? And then my follow up is related to that but some recent data came out Wednesday night, it looks like, on the California residential solar market. It implied volumes are up almost 40% versus last year through March. As you look at your near term backlog, can you give us some sense of how you're trending against that and also versus expectations you might have had entering the year or let's just say versus three months ago? Thank you.

Howard Wenger - President, Business Units

Analyst

Hey Brian, this is Howard Wenger, I'll take that. We're really happy with how things are going in our residential business. We had a solid quarter in Q1 and the outlook for the year is really positive where we grew 50% year-on-year. So in terms of the numbers that you stated we're growing faster than the rest of the market and we believe we're taking market share and that's good. A couple of big drivers for us as we look forward to the year is we just launched our Equinox full complete solution and that we had a good strong quarter in Q1, but we just launched it in Q2. So we believe that and the order rate for that, the new order rate is exceeding 40% for us on the Equinox product. So we – its being very well received and we think it puts us in a even better differentiated advantage going forward. So we're not seeing some of the issues that you mentioned with respect to the market. There is a little bit of a slowdown in terms of approvals from the utilities, but it's not materially impacting our business. Brian K. Lee - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tyler Frank. Your line is now open and please state your company name. Tyler Charles Frank - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Private Wealth Management): Hi, Robert Baird. Thanks for taking the question. Can you guys talk a little bit about 2017, we've been getting a lot of push back as people are looking out to next year and I guess what gives you guys confidence that you'll be able to grow or maintain EBITDA next year when it seems as though other people don't have the same level of visibility? Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: This is Tom. So our view of 2017 remains unchanged from what we said on Analyst Day back in November and the foundation for that is several fold. One, we participate purposely in diversified markets geographically and segments, increasingly on technology. So it diversifies out any single country or single segment risk to a large degree or alternatively gives you more comfort in longer term guidance. Secondly, we believe our product differentiation remains in modules and is expanding in smart energy and so that gives us comfort in terms of customers choosing us in a differentiated way. Thirdly, we're expanding capacity with P Series and that ramp is on track. And so we continue to have confidence in the ramp of that product and the performance both in terms of cost and the performance of energy production both are on track. So the key variables from November remain in place. Where, what's new since November of course is the ITC extension, and if anything that moves business from 2016 to 2017, if there was a general trend caused by the ITC. What it does do more favorably, though it gives you…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Krish Sankar. Your line is now open and please state your company name.

Krish Sankar - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Yeah. Hi. It's Bank of America Merrill Lynch. I had two questions. First one, on the residential side, clearly, it seems like you guys are forecasting pretty strong growth in Q2 from Q1 timeframe. Is this primarily the Equinox line that's driving it. And along the same path, what do we think of the long-term margin profile for the commercial and the residential segment? And a follow-up is, Tom, your thoughts on how the tax equity availability across the different market segments in the U.S. is currently? Thank you.

Howard Wenger - President, Business Units

Analyst

This is Howard. On the residential side, what's happening with us and it's really positive. Our strategy is working and our strategy is basically two-fold. First of all, have the best fully engineered solution in the industry, complete from end-to-end. And as you know, our Equinox product just elevates that to a new standard, which is having a fully manufactured product that was the inverter and the panel completely integrated and plug-and-play AC panel and when you combine that with our upgraded monitoring system, that has quadruple redundancy for communication with the customer, it's really an elegant solution and differentiated the marketplace. And we also focus on, so that's part A of our strategy. Part B is to have great customer experience as measured by third parties. We are able to deliver a much higher NPS score than the competition and we believe that that's helping us as well, because it generates more customer loyalty and higher referral rates and lowering our customer acquisition cost. And we're seeing extreme dealer loyalty, we have a differentiated model go-to-market as well, which gives us a lot of coverage with a lighter OpEx footprint for the company. And those things in combination are providing us in addition to a robust suite of financial products at lower preferred cost of capital versus competition, we believe that whole suite is giving us a differentiated advantage in the marketplace and therefore we're quite bullish in projecting our growth going forward and the numbers are bearing that out. The data is there and the backlog is there. On commercial, just briefly we are – have solid margins, we believe we'll be extending those for the rest of the year. A lot of our execution is going to happen in the second half of this year and our…

Krish Sankar - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst

Thanks, Chuck. Thanks, Howard.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Patrick Jobin. Your line is now open and please state your company name. Patrick S. Jobin - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hi. Credit Suisse. Thanks for taking the questions. Howard, popular guy here on this call. I'm sorry to pile on here with one more question, probably aimed for you. Just diving one level deeper into residential, I'm just looking at the booking number being down year-over-year and sequentially, but installs are great. So I'm just trying to reconcile some drivers of the bookings line. If anything is having an impact there, that'd be helpful. Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: So Chuck do you want to take the first part of that? Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure, Patrick. So, what we've seen is our U.S. volumes are up significantly 50% year-over-year. So we're seeing really really strong growth. Clearly Q1 is a lighter quarter than Q4. Obviously our Q4 is typically a strong quarter because of the tax advantages especially for cash buyers. We are seeing a little bit of a mix shift where we're seeing a lot of demand for our cash solution and the great thing about SunPower is we're not pushing one solution to the customer. We give our customers choice. Many customers prefer to own their systems and pay cash. We also arrange financing for loans. We don't back the loans, but we arrange those for our customers and they're very very attractive rates. We also offer a lease solution. And so we sell the customer what's best for them and so we are seeing very strong demand and volumes that have grown our residential North America significantly. Globally, revenues are in line year-over-year on…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Vishal Shah. Your line is now open, and please state your company name.

Vishal Shah - Deutsche Bank

Analyst

Deutsche Bank. Thank you. Tom, maybe you can talk a little bit about the breakdown of how 2017 shipments will look like between the three segments. I know you mentioned, you feel pretty confident about growth and EBITDA, but can you just talk about how – what percentage of your business would be power plants? And then, can you just talk a little bit about C&I? I understand that the Helix platform is going to drive second half strength, but what do you think is going on in the market right now? You think, there is any slowdown at all or is it just in the company's facility (42:49)? Thank you. Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: So, regarding 2017, I will give you the color that I think is appropriate in May of the preceding year, and what fits, what we're prepared to comment on. I would say that the distributed generation business is going to expand faster than the power plant business in the near term. It's not necessarily the case as we go out in years 2018, 2019 and 2020. We do expect the DG business to expand faster, specifically commercial will which is a segue to the second part of your question, the commercial business will expand really rapidly. And what we're seeing there is the traditional business with of course some select multinational companies and very much the public sector, so schools, water districts and the like public agencies. We see that traditional business staying strong and to that we're adding customers that are committing to go 100% renewable. Apple of course is a leader in that but we saw as an example in the public side Stanford University and we see more multinational companies that are making that commitment because they can have an influence on the environment and their employees want that. They can also typically save money on – and a prime example of that of course is the data center customers. And the data center customers in general as a segment are going renewable and I think that trend is accelerating and that gives us confidence in – certainly the end of 2016 and going into 2017 because we think that's a sector that we'll do particularly well in.

Vishal Shah - Deutsche Bank

Analyst

That's helpful. Can you maybe talk a little also about what you think about the commercial segment and also – there's a lot discussion about price declines in the market in the second half, especially. Are you seeing anything at all on the pricing front? Thank you. Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sure. I'll comment and then Howard might add on. What we see is what is very public is the utility scale tenders and of course we like probably a lot of solar companies have plotted PPA pricing over time and it would be fair to say that the forward pricing continues and that's great for our customers. I think we've crossed grid parity in a lot of the world that's therefore an increasingly international business, because more and more countries will benefit from low cost solar. We of course just won 500 megawatts in Mexico, 100 megawatt project started in Chile. So we have a handful of countries that we're particularly focused on in self development and while staying on the cost down trajectory such that that can still be good business for us. That business will evolve and there'll be ancillary services added to that business. So it won't exclusively be a PPA pricing business. On the commercial and residential side, we don't see prices contracting nearly as fast. The value proposition already is quite good for those customers. We are adding value beyond the solar system in a lot of cases now where we add storage in some cases and energy management and the projects tend to be unique for the customer as well. So the combination of the economics working already and unique circumstances. So certainly our pricing has come down but not nearly as fast as the power plant business and that would be our comments for this year and equally so in the residential sector. Anything you wanted to add Howard? So I think that would be our color on both of those questions.

Vishal Shah - Deutsche Bank

Analyst

Thank you.

Robert Okunski - Senior Director-Investor Relations

Management

Thanks Vishal.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Colin Rusch. Your line is now open and please state your company name. Colin Rusch - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Oppenheimer & Company. Guys can you talk a little bit about the proliferation of commercial PACE structures and how you see that impacting demand on the commercial rooftop market over the next couple of years? Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So we're not doing a lot with PACE right now. We're primarily doing transactions with investment grade optic (47:12) and doing sale leasebacks in larger systems. And so we do have a really strong commercial VAR network. But I'd say most of our volumes are going through larger scale corporates that are investment grade where we get really really attractive financing. Colin Rusch - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Okay, great. And then as you move more of your power plant business into emerging markets. Can you talk a little bit about the dynamics around project level debt and guarantees that you're seeing from non-governmental agencies? Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So what we're seeing on the international side is that we are finding low cost financing for international large scale power plants. As it relates to moving those around, we're not moving volume for large scale projects around too much. Where you're seeing a little bit of movement is in the North American projects but even there we're pretty much staying on schedule because getting tax equity structured is a critical part of the transaction. On the cost of that, we're seeing very attractive financing costs. I'll point out on the commercial side, we were really happy today to announce a $200 million commercial warehouse that has a couple of really unique features. One, it's a very, very low cost of capital of L plus 1.50%. It's a five-year facility and what's really unique is that we can actually put projects in there, in many cases use 100% debt financing to build the project and have some flexibility for the takeout. So if we have the tax equity structured, we then have flexibility to sell that over time as opposed to needing to sell the asset right away. So I think we're in a really good place for both timing and cost of financing. Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: And then in terms of support of something like World Bank or IFC, we see that in Africa where they may back a PPA so that it's more bankable and there is programs in Africa to sort of kick start that country. And in the long run, that's going to be a very good solar market. Colin Rusch - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): All right. Thanks guys. Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. I think, we're going to take one more question, please.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Morosi. Your line is now open, and please state your company name.

Michael Morosi - Avondale Partners LLC

Analyst

Hi, guys. It's Michael Morosi from Avondale. Thanks for taking the question. First, I was just hoping, you could give a little more color around the development of the Mexico market. Obviously, you guys had a lot of success with that first tender. But I'd just like to see your thoughts on that market longer term, both with respect to utility scale, but also potential DG opportunities down the road? Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. The first tender was very successfully run. It was a very positive success for SunPower. There is also a legacy program that SunPower has capacity in still, and that's what ASUR was part of. And there is up to a couple of hundred megawatts more potential in that legacy program and these are ground mount systems. There will be another tender coming up, that will end this summer, I think in July. So we expect this just to be the beginning. On the DG side. The DG market was maybe 50 megawatts. So by standards around the world, it's an early stage market. We think it has real potential. In both cases of course we're capitalizing on our very large presence in Mexico and the investment in resources we made four years or five years ago, so we know the market well and expect to capitalize on both of those well. I would also say that the 500 megawatts we won has created a lot of interest with other parties. And therefore we think will sort of allow us to expand business by partnering with other companies as well. So a number of avenues for us to grow in Mexico. We're very committed in the long run because of that.

Michael Morosi - Avondale Partners LLC

Analyst

Thanks for that. And then with respect to the breakdown of projects for 2016 delivery, that was some great detail there. Those handful of projects that are potential 8point3 drops or could go to third-party. How are you thinking about that in terms of timing and any potential risk to full year guidance and any potential push outs there? Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. Well, so – in the column you'll see we've labeled whether it's third-party, 8point3 or possibly both. And so the ones that are both we have flexibility on, the ones that are 8point3 are in the ROFO and we would offer those to 8point3. In many cases the larger projects that would have a material impact on the P&L we intend to structure with a 51-49 structure where effectively we'll bring in a strategic who would buy just over half of the asset and then we would have flexibility for the 49%. And certainly we could sell all of the asset if 8point3 doesn't want to buy it, we could replace the ROFO list or we could sell 8point3. So, I think we're in a good position with flexibility and we want to provide the detail to give you a lot more color on the strength of our business in the back half of the year.

Michael Morosi - Avondale Partners LLC

Analyst

Thanks a lot. Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. I appreciate the questions. I think we're going to end it here. I appreciate everyone calling in very much and we look forward to our next earnings call for Q2. Thank you everybody.