Thomas Werner
Analyst · Goldman Sachs
Thanks, Bob. And thank you for joining us. On this call, we will provide an overview of our third quarter 2019 performance and an update on our strategic initiatives that are driving improved profitability and shareholder value. Please turn to slide three. SunPower executed well in Q3, meeting or exceeding our financial targets for the quarter, including our adjusted EBITDA forecast. Volume, revenue and margin all came in on plan, driven by strong demand across our global DG business. In SPES, we are positioned well for the fourth quarter with record booking levels in both our residential and new homes businesses. Our SPT business also delivered record quarterly shipments in Q3, with particular strength in DG markets including Europe, Korea, Australia and Southeast Asia. Volume growth was enabled by capacity expansion initiatives across all fabs, including our P-Series JV. Finally, we strengthened our balance sheet, generated cash at the business unit level and closed our safe harbor financing agreement with Hannon Armstrong. Now, let me cover our segment performance in greater detail. First SPES. Please turn to slide four. Overall, both our residential and commercial businesses showed sequential revenue and megawatt growth with significant interest in our recently launched residential Equinox Storage solution. In residential, demand for our A-Series panels is strong and we are ramping production to meet this need. We continue to build under industry-leading position in new homes where our backlog is now over 40,000 homes, with record bookings and shipments during the quarter. To give you a feeling for the current scale of this business, we saw 80 new home communities go live with SunPower solar in Q3. The mix of cash, loan and lease across our residential business remains balanced, in line with forecast, with particularly strong demand for our loan products. In digital, we launched our design studio app nationwide and continue to see significant use of this design software by our dealers, given the ease and speed of system design. Finally, the rollout of our Equinox storage product is on plan. We are now completing beta deal test and will start shipping at scale at the end of Q1. In C&I, we maintained our number one share position with volume increasing approximately 10% sequentially. Our origination team is executing well as we were awarded 65 MW of new projects during the quarter. However, our project deployment execution has been disappointing. As a result, we are undertaking a number of initiatives in our commercial direct business that we believe will drive stronger financial performance, starting in the fourth quarter. Our Helix storage solution is selling well, with the pipeline exceeding 145 MW and average attach rates of approximately 35% over the last 12 months. We have been awarded approximately 30 MW in storage projects to date. Finally, we are seeing solid demand for our P-Series product manufactured in our Oregon facility, with recent deployments for both Chevron and Walmart. In addition to the initiatives I just mentioned, we have made the strategic decision to realign our SPES business by combining our residential and small commercial dealer channels starting in Q4. Please turn to slide five. We are reorganizing our SPES business into an indirect channel business in a commercial direct model in order to drive scale, lower channel costs and improve our margin profile. This creates the largest residential and commercial dealer platform in the industry, with an installed base of 1.7 GW, over 300,000 customers in a network of more than 500 dealer partners. This group also includes our new homes business where our share continues to exceed 50%. We expect this structure will enable us to improve margins through increased OpEx efficiency, supply chain leverage and potential cross-sell opportunities with storage and services. We are making significant progress towards achieving our greater than 10% EBITDA target in the channels business with Q3 coming in at approximately 5%. For C&I, we continue to believe in the potential for this business despite our uneven performance this year. Given our number one market share, $3 billion pipeline, strong repeat customer track record and innovative storage and services offerings, we are well-positioned to continue to lead in the C&I market. We are taking a number of steps to improve our project deployment execution and to reduce operating expenses. We're confident that these adjustments will return the commercial business to sustainable profitability. Finally, I'm happy to announce the launch of our Equinox residential storage solution last quarter to capitalize on what we see is a significant opportunity for growth in the residential market. Please turn to slide six. Equinox storage is the next major evolution of our Equinox energy platform, giving homeowners more freedom from utility outages and onerous peak electric rates. With Equinox, homeowners can store energy for full or partial home backup during blackouts and reduce daily peak electricity consumption. Most importantly, Equinox storage is the only fully-integrated residential system designed, engineered and warranted by a single company which we see as a distinct competitive advantage in this rapidly growing space. Built on the success of our Helix storage platform, Equinox storage offers residential customers an industry-leading solution with significant advantages compared to our competition, including battery cycle performance, smaller modular footprint and a superior warranty. We are currently testing beta units in the field and are taking initial orders. We expect a national rollout starting in Q1 of next year. Now, let's review our SunPower Technologies business. Please turn to slide seven. Our manufacturing team executed well again in Q3, delivering record shipments that exceeded plan, while meeting cost and yield targets. Our next generation Maxeon-5 technology is hitting its performance goals and we are on track to achieve full ramp of our first Maxeon-5 line pair by the end of this quarter. Production of our P-Series technology is also going well. And we expect to ship a combined total of 1.3 GW of P-Series this year from our joint venture in Oregon manufacturing facility. Our SPT international sales group posted another strong performance will record overall volume for the quarter, led by our best ever shipments into our European DG channel. We continue to drive the mix in SPT toward the higher margin DG segment, with more than 70% of our shipments to this market in Q3. SPT also continues to expand its footprint in the power plant segment with a solid backlog for 2020. Finally, we are making good progress towards finalizing a potential investment to accelerate the scale up of Maxeon-5 capacity and expect to be in position to announce this agreement in the fourth quarter. Now, let's take a closer look at the details of SPT's strong international market growth. Please turn to slide eight. Over the past year, SPT has roughly doubled sales volume outside of the US, with a primary focus on DG markets. In EMEA, where SPT is the deepest and most mature dealer network, shipment growth in 2019 exceeded 40%. In APAC, annual shipment growth of 160% is fueled by strong core market DG demand in Australia and Korea, strong traction in several Southeast Asian markets as well as supply to selected power plant projects in the region. Shipments to Latin America showed the highest growth, albeit from a small base, and we're increasing our sales resources in that territory. SPT currently does not sell into China and is therefore not exposed to China market demand fluctuations. One of the factors that enabled rapid growth in 2019 is our P-Series joint venture. I would now like to provide a little color on the JV. Please turn to slide nine. Following the 2015 acquisition of Cogenra and the shingling technology, we engaged with our long-term partner in China, DZS, with whom we had structured a number of JVs and joint development agreements in various parts of the value chain. Early in 2017, we signed agreements to scale up our P-Series technology within a JV located in Yixing, China, managed by DZS. DZS brought not only funding to the JV, but also significant manufacturing expertise and deep connections with the regional low-cost supply chain. The first P-Series models were produced by the JV at the end of 2017. And in 2018, we sold just under 300 MW of panels from the JV. In 2019, we expect that our sales volume of JV produced panels will grow to almost 1.2 GW, more than a fourfold increase. We see strong demand for this technology across all customer segments, driven by superior product attributes such as higher efficiency, better reliability and enhanced energy yield. Our P-Series technology is unique and proprietary and we have taken steps to ensure appropriately strong IP protection. We're pleased in Q3 to receive our first issued P-Series patents in China, which adds to a growing portfolio of P-Series patents in key global markets. Given the successful 2 GW ramp of our P-Series JV and the strong customer demand for this product, we are currently in discussions with DZS about further capacity expansion. Please turn to slide 10. In summary, we are pleased with the company's performance in Q3 as we met or exceeded all of our key financial metrics. Our SPES residential and commercial channel organization is performing well and we're highly focused on improving our commercial direct business execution. SPT continues to drive strong global sales growth, fueled by expansion of our Maxeon-5 and P-Series capacity and with a bias towards DG markets. Finally, we continue to improve our balance sheet and delivered strong cash generation performance for the quarter. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Manu to review the financials. Manu?