Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for standing by. My name is Hannah, and I will be your conference operator today. Today's call is being recorded. I would like to welcome everyone to Nextracker's Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Call. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a Q&A session. At this time, for opening remarks, I would like to pass the call over to Ms. Mary Lai, Vice President of Investor Relations. Mary, you may begin.

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Nextracker's Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Call. I'm Mary Lai, Vice President, Investor Relations. I'm joined by Dan Shugar, our CEO and Founder; Howard Wenger, our President; and Dave Bennett, our CFO. Following our prepared remarks, we will transition to a Q&A session. As a reminder, there will be a replay of this call posted on the IR website, along with our slide [ presentation ]. Today's call contains statements regarding our business, financial performance and operations, including the impact of our business and industries, that may be considered forward-looking statements, and such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. Those statements are based on current beliefs, assumptions and expectations and speak only as of the current date. For more information on our risk factors and uncertainties, please visit our IR website at investors.nextracker.com, which includes our press release, slides, SEC filings and our most recent filings with the SEC. This information is subject to change, and we undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Please note, we will provide non-GAAP measures on today's call. The full non-GAAP to GAAP reconciliations can be found in the appendix slides of today's presentation as well as on the financial section of the IR website. And now I will turn the call over to our CEO and Founder, Dan?

Thank you, Mary. We're excited to have you join our team. Good afternoon. Welcome to our second quarter earnings call. Before we cover Nextracker, we offer thoughts on the Middle East tragedy. We are profoundly saddened and distressed by the violent events that took place in Israel a few weeks ago and the subsequent loss of life and tensions in the Middle East. Our hearts go out to all those impacted. We [ stand ] for peace, where all people are free and safe. We believe our vision of a renewably powered world will contribute to our peace and stability. I will provide a high-level summary of our future performance and an update on the separation from Flex. This quarter is what we've come to expect from Nextracker, strong execution. This marks our third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, with Q2 achieving record revenue, record profits and record backlog. Q2's strong performance, with total revenue of $573 million, growing 23% year-over-year, was driven by broad-based growth in most markets. Our adjusted EBITDA expanded to $110 million, a 164% increase compared to this quarter last year. Profitability growth was primarily driven by our strong execution and strategic supply chain repositioning capacity expansion and continued focus on pricing discipline. As stated previously, our financial results this quarter exclude expected benefits from the IRA 45X tax credit related to tracker components. We also delivered another strong quarter of new contract bookings, with strength in both the U.S. and international markets, resulting in a new record backlog, which is significantly over $3 billion, defined to fund contracts with deposits with identified projects and ship dates. With the strong performance in the first half of the year, record backlog and demand momentum, we are raising the midpoint of our annual revenue and profit guidance by…

Thank you, Dan. We are indeed pleased with our team's excellent execution and performance. As noted, our success has been driven by innovation and our differentiated product offering by an unwavering commitment to our customers and by our competitive drive to win and make solar power mainstream. In Q2, we had continued wins in the marketplace, and we unveiled a trifecta of 3 new and key product innovations. Let me start with sales and a business update. I'm pleased to report we had another strong quarter for new business in both the U.S. and international markets, increasing our backlog quarter-over-quarter to a new record of significantly over $3 billion. Let's look a bit closer at the U.S. market, which remains our largest segment, with approximately 2/3 of our total Q2 revenue. We continue to have a healthy combination of new EPC contracts with new and repeat customers and additional volume commitment agreements or VCAs. We signed several new VCA contracts in the quarter, one of which we publicly announced for 2 gigawatts with Clearway Energy Group, a U.S. solar developer and power plant owner. I'm pleased to report we continue to make significant strides in our EPC and VCA programs, further developing and solidifying long-term relationships with developers, power plant owners and PPCs. Furthermore, we believe this approach reduces risk in our business, and we believe it is a competitive advantage that plays to our strengths in technology, execution, customer focus and company assets. I would like to reiterate a couple of points we have made previously regarding VCAs. The VCA typically carries a 2-year term and has a specific list of multiple projects that we are committed to supply. These specific projects are included in our backlog as they are contractually binding with elements such as pricing tied to…

Thank you, Howard. Before I start, I'd like to remind everyone that all references to financial metrics, except for revenue, are non-GAAP adjusted. And all growth rates are year-over-year, unless otherwise stated. We completed our first half of fiscal year 2024 with strong execution. Record revenue for Q2 closed above our expectations at $573 million, up 23% year-over-year. Both the U.S. and the rest of the world equally drove that increase. Current quarter mix was 67% and 33%, respectively. As expected, we saw a sequential uptick to U.S. revenue, primarily due to projects generally progressing on schedule and as planned, and we saw improvements in channel availability. There is no change to our projected full year revenue mix. We still expect the U.S. to be between $60 to 70% of total revenue. Adjusted EBITDA for Q2 was $110 million. This was an increase of $68 million or 164% growth and set a new record for the company. Project gross margins expanded in Q2 and are now tracking in the mid-20s. Our Q2 EBITDA margin of 19.2% was up over 1,000 basis points from the prior year and marks the sixth consecutive quarter of sequential margin improvement. As Dan and Howard provided in their remarks, we have made structural enhancements to our business that include expanding our global supply chain that allows for localized content and flexibility servicing our customers. This multiyear transformation, along with our continued pricing discipline, has improved our margin structure was the primary drivers supporting our record profit generation in Q2. Adjusted free cash flow was $26 million for the quarter, and $251 million for the first half of fiscal '24, driven by strong net working capital management, increased customer deposits from strong bookings and higher EBITDA. Net working capital at the end of Q2 was less…

We achieved record financial results through innovation, our global supply chain, a multiyear strategic supply chain transformation and our relentless focus on customer service. Our performance is supported by our deep industry domain expertise and our trusted customer relationships. We understand the needs of developers, independent power producers and contractors. I'm proud of what we've accomplished as a company. In fact, the SF Chronicle recently recognized Nextracker with the Top Workplaces of 2023 Award. It's an honor to be leading and working with a group of technology innovators. We now look forward to your questions. Let me pass the call back to the operator.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question is from the line of Mark Strouse with JPMorgan.

Great, and congrats on a strong print here. Dave, I wanted to start with the margins. So since the IPO, we've been kind of conditioned to think about this business as kind of a mid-teens EBITDA margin business. Your guidance is kind of indicating closer to high teens now. Just kind of the reasons that you stated for the guide sound more structural in nature, but I just want to confirm if that's kind of the new base level of margins we should be expecting with, obviously with the caveat that there's quarterly fluctuations?

Mark, thanks for the question. Yes, confirmed that, if you recall, we've been messaging the last couple of quarters when we've had execution upside and the drivers behind those. After printing a couple of quarters, Q1 over 17% in this current quarter over 19%. We're confident and committed in the higher-margin structure that was driven by that global supply chain and our investments throughout the business to ensure that higher margin profile.

Our next question is from the line of Jon Windham with UBS.

Perfect. I was wondering if you could just -- any comments you could share about conversations you're having with customers over the last couple of months. Obviously, the volatility in interest rates is a concern for people. So just any color you have on how those conversations have maybe evolved over the last couple of months.

This is Howard Wenger. Well, the outlook is very positive, and we continue to have very strong demand in the United States, which is 2/3 of our business as well as international. Regarding interest rates, it is a topic, but we -- what we're hearing is that there are a number of levers that can accommodate higher interest rates, including you have the IRA benefit of a 30% tax credit where a lot of these projects that were developed were under the assumption of a much lower tax credit on the order of 10% even, in many cases, and then you've got the bonus ITC. Plus there's really very strong demand for clean energy in the U.S. and electric demand is increasing. And where the electric demand is increasing, such as data centers, for example, clean energy is something that's very much sought after, which means a higher -- potentially higher power purchase agreement price. So those are just a few of the levers that can accommodate a higher interest rate. But certainly, it's something that is being watched closely.

Our next question is from the line of Julien Smith with Bank of America.

Just clarifying the last couple real quickly. First, just in terms of project delays, obviously, what you're saying here fairly constructive through the course of the year. Can you clarify, are you seeing churn in your backlog here in terms of projects moving in and out? Or are you seeing fairly consistent schedules executed here for every reason that it looks like supply chain is getting a little bit back in the norm? And then relating to that structural execution here, 19% here as you allude here second quarter, are you guiding up? Is there the potential to sustain at this 19-plus percent such that there could be a little bit more latitude in full year numbers, just to kind of clarify on what you're saying about the back half of the year.

Julien, Dan Shugar here. Thanks for your question. One of the benefits of operating globally is we can serve -- we are serving many dozens of countries in parallel, simultaneously, that helps as a global manufacturer. I think in terms of the projects, we've just seen the breadth and the depth of the projects in our Tier 1 customers expand very significantly over the last few years. We've gone from megawatts to gigawatts from projects to programs. And so even within a given customer, they have 1 project that's delayed, often they'll have another project, which can fill its gap. Now for sure, there's been individual projects that experienced delays that happens. That's not a new thing. We've just seen just a huge amount of demand in the markets in the U.S. and abroad and our record results in terms of revenue recognition, bear that out from what we've accomplished so far and our confidence that, that's going to continue, has enabled us to increase our guidance on revenue for this year. Dave, can you address Julien's question with respect to margin, please?

Sure. Julian, keep in mind, we are longer contract life cycle. So I think in terms of sustainability, absolutely, we would confirm sustaining our midpoint of our guidance, which is almost 18% EBITDA. And that is really derived, if you just look at the first 2 quarters, profitability, it's around in the middle of that. And yes, our guide would be committing us to sustaining that.

Our next question is from Praneeth Satish with Wells Fargo.

I guess when you look at some of your competitors, they are competing more aggressively with some of the developers that are more price sensitive. Just curious for your thoughts on that part of the market and whether you would consider releasing either a new product or using margin as a weapon to kind of gain some market share there in an NPV positive way.

This is Howard Wenger. So thank you for the question. We're extremely disciplined when it comes to pricing and -- we're not a company that chases business. We partner with Tier 1 customers, both owner developers and EPCs. And we partner with companies who understand our value proposition. And we are relentless in terms of our product offering and innovation. When it comes to LCOE, wells cost of energy, which is the governing equation for the power plant owner who is the ultimate customer. And there's 3 components to the LCO inflation, there's the CapEx that you referred to or capital upfront capital costs. There's the operating cost. And then in the denominator, it's the energy output. So we unveiled just in the last -- this past quarter, 3 upgrades and next generations of key technology the company has that addresses all the of those buckets that contribute to lower LCOE. So our XTR train following 1.5, we can now install on more undulating sites, saving costs and speeding, permitting, our TrueCapture software continues to expand so that we capture more energy on an annual basis. And then we have our Hail Pro, which we announced to enable us to install cost effectively in areas that are prone to hail. So it's just some of the examples of things that we do to address cost. And our margins are improving, as Dave and Dan mentioned. Sure, that's an additional lever if we need to address price. But as a company, we are extremely disciplined when it comes to price, and it's not our central weapon is to just be the low-price provider.

Our next question is from Christine Cho with Barclays.

Maybe if I could just come back to gross margins and ask it a little differently. Last quarter, you did see, I think, quite a big decline. I think in your Q said it was like 1,000 bps decline in freight and logistics as a percentage of COGS last quarter. Was that a similar tailwind this quarter? And as raw material costs go down, is that a tailwind for you? I thought there was some back-to-back contracting to -- and you guys fixing your costs when you fix your ASPs. So margin with respect to raw materials was relatively fixed, but just wondering if that has changed.

Christine, thanks for the question. So we did message last quarter that logistics was a tailwind in our execution upside. What we were cleared in messaging on top of that was that our structure allowed for us to generate both to actual execution that locked in the margins. And what we're doing now is locking that in. We're a little ahead of schedule on that in terms of our margin structure. But now we've locked that in and committed to locking that in to meet our quote to actual. So certainly, our pricing looks at the landscape and that's raw materials, that's logistics, and we lock in our contractual enhancements, I think Dan spoke to as well that give us more confidence in locking in that margin, but they all come together. And that's really the driver behind our increased guide to the midpoint at that 18% EBITDA and mid-20s for the gross margins that you're asking about.

And building on your comment, Dave, as Howard mentioned in his prepared remarks, we're seeing increased uptake of our value-add products like TrueCapture. And that has been a factor in our margin growth in the last quarter as well. So we're seeing, as panel availability issues have improved significantly in the U.S. In the last year, project commissioning is progressing nicely. And that also supports commissioning of our TrueCapture software and control system and other features.

Our next question is from Philip Shen with ROTH.

Congrats on a very strong quarter. You gave us backlog of significantly greater than $3 billion. Can you speak to the bookings at all? The prior quarter you guys gave backlog as greater than $3 billion, and now you're significantly greater. Let's say you're at $3.5 billion now. Would it be reasonable to think that your Q2 bookings were close to $1 billion or maybe over $1 billion? Or at least can you comment on whether or not the book-to-bill was at least over 1? And then shifting to software. You talked about the increased adoption of software with potential for strong margin contribution from software. Can you talk about how software adoption could ramp in Q3 and 4 and even in F2025?

Phil, so this is Howard. So we had another really strong quarter on bookings and customer wins and new contracts, as I mentioned, also several VCAs. And our wins and bookings are very consistent with the last 2 quarters on that front. So that should give you an indication. Certainly, our book-to-bill is greater than 1 for sure. And so that should give you enough color on the strength of demand and bookings. And as far as our software and adoption, yes, we're really happy with the adoption rate, the attach rate for TrueCapture. We're adding more features. We have -- we haven't guided, but the color is that we see it having a growing impact on our margin going forward. Thanks for the question/2-questions-into-1 combination there, Phil.

Our next question is from the line of Vikram Bagri with Citi.

I wanted to follow up on some of the previous questions on pricing. Really appreciate your disciplined pricing strategy, but I was wondering if the pricing negotiations with customers are somewhat getting tougher? Panel pricing is down, so trackers are now somewhat a larger percentage of total hardware cost in an industry which is dealing with higher financing costs. I was wondering if you are seeing somewhat tougher sort of like negotiations with customers? And on the same note, you mentioned the launch of the new tech suite, which gives you an edge over the competition. I was wondering what's next? The 1.5 in XDR 1.5 indicates there are new products underway, so there will be a 2.0, if you can indicate the timing and what should we expect on the new product front?

I'll handle, at least, the first question, and I think Dan is going to add to it. So on the pricing front, I just want to say that I'm glad you brought that up because there's something that I didn't mention. There are a couple of things I didn't mention on the last question regarding pricing. We're still very competitive. It's not like we have an enormous premium that we're charging customers. We're still very competitive, and we're offering a lot more. We believe we're the highest quality, most reliable tracker in the world that we deliver a lower cost of energy to the power plant owner that we're a stronger company than our competitors in terms of our balance sheet and capability and domain expertise. And we keep adding features that address both the installed cost. So for our EPCs that we partner with, we're making it easier and easier for them to install our systems, doing it faster, lowering their costs, which gives us more of a preference there, including better tools and better parts and better support. And we're adding features that benefit the operators of our power plant, the power plants that use our trackers, and we're offering features that increase energy for the power plant owner and in totality, it's a higher-quality product. But it's a competitive world, and we recognize that. And we are competing day in, day out ferociously because that's who we are. We want to win and we feel like we are winning. Dan, did you have any additional comments?

Yes, building on your comments, Howard, in some markets, we've seen the price in dollars per watt of solar panels drop. And a natural tendency is to think about how that might impact balance system in particular tracker viability. But you have to keep in mind that as the price of the solar panels has dropped in dollars per watt, the efficiency of the solar panels has skyrocketed. So we're seeing panels now at 600 to 700 watts per panel. That's double what they were 5 years ago. And so you're getting a lot more bang for the buck with the tracker and the tracker also enables bifacial energy to be harvested from the back, whereas with a fixed system, it doesn't. I would just say also the size of these plants have increased enormously. And the stakes with the tracker system, which is the skeletal system on the track are much higher. We've seen a flight to quality in terms of product and in terms of the ability, the wherewithal of Nextracker as a very strong company to be able to fulfill both our financial capacity. Dave mentioned, we have over $800 million of liquidity, a very low debt position. We've consistently operated the company prudently where we've been profitable for the last 5 years and also on the product where we don't cut any corners on any aspect of the system. Also, there is a real focus on how these systems are actually operated and maintained. Howard mentioned our NX Navigator system, which provides operational benefits and also risk reduction in the actual operation of the systems to extreme weather. Thank you for your comment.

Our next question is from Jordan Levy with Truist.

Maybe I appreciate the color you gave on the new tech suite. Maybe if you could just talk to sort of initial customer reaction to those products, Hail Pro, XTR 1.5 and Zonal Diffuse.

Sure. This is Howard. So we -- Jordan, we are really happy with the release of where we actually fielded it starting in 2018. We've got over 70 projects now with in the field. And so what XTR 1.5, so there's already significant interest and adoption of XTR. But with 1.5, which doubles the range, it effectively doubles the ability to conform to undulating terrain and opens up the TAM. So -- which makes it easier for the developer to find sites, not only flat sites, which are ideal, but rolling train sites. So it brings a lot more into play in terms of the market. So, so far, the interest is extremely high and it is helping with our bookings velocity these new -- the current innovation suite that we have in the next-gen suite that we just announced. Thanks for your question.

Our next question is from Tristan Richardson with Scotiabank.

Can you talk a little bit -- Howard, you mentioned 45x and these would be looked at on a case-by-case basis and customer by customer. Can you talk about the backlog and maybe frame for us perhaps the proportion of domestic backlog where domestic content is absolutely critically important to the customer. Said another way, is there a proportion of your U.S. funnel of business that where the customer is really looking for the most cost-effective solution in domestic content might not be a priority?

Right. You nailed it with your question. Every customer is different, every project is different. But to generalize, every developer of consequence that we know, they are highly interested in the domestic content and capturing the bonus ITC. And so they're doing everything they can to do that. Are they doing that on every one of their projects. Keep in mind, these developers have tens of projects that they're developing with various equipment sets, especially on the panel side that they're lining up for it. And the panels really matter, of course, where they're sourced as do the trackers. And so it just depends on the project, but I would say that every -- just about most customers, most customers are looking to take advantage of the bonus ITC, and we are very engaged with them on our ability to fulfill that for them. Of course, that's the U.S. Yes. Thank you.

Our next question is from Derek Soderberg with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Yes. So I wanted to actually ask about the Indian market, clearly, a big opportunity there. Wondering if you can first kind of clarify what's your production capacity there today and gigawatts? And how do you think about that going forward? But just broadly on the Indian market, what sort of gives you the confidence that you can really win in that market? Is that a price-sensitive market? What do they sort of like about Nextracker? Is it the manufacturing model, so you can use domestic content? Is it the actual tracker technology and software? Can you talk a bit about what's going to take to win in that market?

Sure. I appreciate that, Derek. Nextracker has been engaged in the India market since our founding 10 years ago. We have our second largest office is in Hyderabad, which is right in the middle of the country. We have a tremendously talented team covering most of the functionality of the company and a very strong engineering base and a super strong support analysis and project engineering team there. And we did our first project in India in 2014, a 1 megawatt system. We did our first -- we did the very first 100-megawatt tracker in India, and that was in 2015. The project continues to operate well. We delivered 27 projects prior to 2020, and those projects have performed very well. And we have a very, very good reputation of being able to deliver a cost-effective product, and I'll speak to that without cutting corners on product quality. That has -- and there's been a flight to quality. I mentioned that with customers globally, and that's true also in India. What's happened, it's really interesting as the panel technology move toward bifacial. The focus on customers on higher efficiency and higher performing systems in India have significantly increased. So we're seeing the market moving towards trackers. We have 5 gigawatts of demand between the systems that are operational and those that are being fulfilled on a go-forward. With respect to capacity, our teams worked very hard to build manufacturing in India for India. That's helped us become more -- become very cost effective within India for the customers there. And so we have 10 gigawatts of capacity in India for India or it could be used for export. We mentioned our meat and surge philosophy in India embodies that. So that's happened through a lot of hard work. And currently, for India, we can manufacture over 80% of the content in India for those customers. So we've been really committed to the market there, in part because the India is from a power generation and fossil intensity standpoint where the United States was 15 years ago, where between 50% and 60% of the power comes from coal. So there's an opportunity to really radically reduce the carbon intensity of the power generation sector. And we're focused in India. We're delivering high-quality systems. The sophistication of the customers is high and there's been a flight to quality. So we feel great about our position there and supporting India on a go forward.

That is all the time we have for questions today. I will now pass the call over to the Nextracker team for any closing remarks.

Thank you for joining. We look forward to speaking to you next quarter and speak to many of you soon. This concludes our earnings call. Thank you.

That concludes today's Nextracker Q2 2024 earnings call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.