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SunPower Inc. (SPWR)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 17, 2016

$0.83

-7.17%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to SunPower Corporation's Fourth Quarter 2015 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, Senior Director of Investor Relations-SunPower Corporation. Thank you, sir. You may now begin.

Robert Okunski - Senior Director-Investor Relations

Management

Thank you, Tory. I'd like to welcome everyone to our fourth quarter 2015 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 fourth quarter 2015 financial results. Tom will also discuss our strategy post the ITC extension as well as our outlook for Q1 and 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 the Safe Harbor slide of today's presentation, today's earnings press release, our 2014 10-K, and on 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'll 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'll start by providing some context on the overall solar market and growth potential before discussing our strong fourth quarter and 2015 performance in greater detail. Please turn to slide four. Fundamentals for solar have never been better. As you can see on this slide, our current forecast is for global solar deployment to approximately double over the coming five years with shipments exceeding 100…

Operator

Operator

At this time, we are now ready to begin the question-and-answer session. Thank you. Our first question is from Tyler Frank. 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 comment a little bit about your expectations for 2017 and how you're seeing the pipeline come in in the U.S.? And then how should we think about the value of the Infigen pipeline that you acquired, now that the ITC has been extended versus when you purchased the pipeline? Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Tyler, for the question. So, in terms of 2017, I we're significantly more optimistic, and that's caused us to invest more aggressively in 2016, setting the table for 2017 and beyond. So, 2017 I think will be a very strong year across the board, across all three segments in the United States. What we are seeing a little bit is with commercial and utility scale that there isn't the motivation, the artificial motivation of the ITC cliff. And so, we can have a more thoughtful approach to when we execute on projects which I think is better for everybody. So, very much an extraordinarily positive outcome in December of 2015. In terms of Infigen, that turned out to be a really – it worked out really well because the assets are complementary to where we have land positions. A lot of assets are in the south, in the middle of the country and the southwest where we didn't have as many land positions. So, as we plot sort of in America where there's RPSs still available where the Clean Power Plan will make the most difference and of course, where there's good sunlight. And we look at the intersection of those. We think we really nailed it with the Infigen pipeline. It's a 1.4 gigawatt pipeline. I think in time, we'll perfect most, if not all, of that pipeline, whereas it probably would not have been the case without the ITC. So very, very bullish outlook in all three segments in America for sure. Thanks. Tyler Charles Frank - Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. (Private Wealth Management): Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Pavel Molchanov. Please state your company name. Pavel S. Molchanov - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Raymond James. Thanks for taking my question. At the Analyst Day in November, you talked about doubling EBITDA by 2020. Now that was the 40 ITC exception. Directionally, what kind of impact do you think that will have to that target of doubling EBITDA by the end of the decade? Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Hey. Thanks, Pavel. This is Chuck. Yeah, specifically, our plan was to triple volume, double revenue and double EBITDA over that period through 2020. And with the ITC, I think we're more bullish. Well, likely, what that will mean is more investment in North America and a higher percentage of North American projects. We're not prepared today to update or raise guidance. But I'll put it this way, we're a lot more bullish on both volume and the economics set for the North American market. Pavel S. Molchanov - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Okay. And if I can follow up with a quick one, also on the policy front, you're in kind of a unique position of dealing with utilities, but also competing against them in the residential part of the business. So how are you navigating the net metering controversies that have been popping up from state-to-state? Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I would say that you're exactly right, our biggest customers are in the IOUs in America. And at the same time, we aren't completely aligned on distributed generation. But I'd say we're more aligned on those parts of the solar segments in terms of, obviously, power plants but also community solar. And when we look – and there's commercial programs as well when you look at SoCal Edison in their LCR program. When we look at DG, it's frankly our belief the customer choice is going to be what drives the market and that the economics of DG have improved so dramatically that it's more a question of how to implement, not whether it will be allowed. So, some of the developments I think are sort of round one or round two. And I think in the long-term, we'll find the right way to get DG done, and I look at programs like SoCal Edison as maybe one of the models. Pavel S. Molchanov - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: I appreciate it, guys. Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Pavel.

Operator

Operator

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

Krish Sankar - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Yeah. Hi. It's Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two of them. Let me ask them upfront. First one, either Chuck or Tom, can you talk a little bit about the tax equity availability across the different market segments like commercial, resi, power plants in the U.S. And the second question I had was, can you give an update on how the P Series is doing? And it looks like two-third of your pipeline is in APAC, Middle East, Africa. How much of that would be targeted using P-Series? Thank you. Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thanks, Krish. I'll go first and address tax equity. So we see a very strong tax equity market for SunPower investors who like to work with SunPower because of our reputation, our balance sheet, the strength. To answer your question on residential, we've recently closed a new fund that will provide us capacity we think through the year. And so, we're very excited about this new fund and it's sort of in line with the prior funds that we've done with similar investors. On commercial, we finance those many different ways. There is a lot of demand from investors. Recently, Wells Fargo financed a couple commercial projects. They're a great partner. And then finally on utility scale, there is, we think, still a strong demand in utility for our projects. If we sell to 8point3, then we bring in a pure cash equity or tax equity investor. And if we do other structures, then it could be a different deal, but there's very strong demand for our projects. Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I'll take P-Series. First of all, to remind everybody, we bought a company called Cogenra. We closed that transaction, I think, late August. We retained everybody on the team. We're really pleased with that. They've really contributed great. Technology is working exactly as planned. We produced a megawatt of product already. We fielded 700 megawatts. We'll have a megawatt in the field in the next week. We've got 500 megawatts of equipment on order that will be installed this year that'll prepare us for producing approximately 600 megawatts next year. And then to your point, this product will be targeted towards Asia Pacific and Africa because it has a lower upfront cost. Recall that the product disposition is relative high efficiency, certainly relative to the mainstream product in the market. It will be higher efficiency, but similar cost or better. And so, it is particularly well-suited for those non-OECD markets. And I want to say as well that in a place like Africa, where Total has a meaningful share of the energy market and has a great footprint, that channel that they have in Africa is something that we expect to leverage, and we expect to leverage it with the P-Series product. Thank you.

Krish Sankar - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Thanks, Tom. Thanks, Chuck. Operator : Thank you. Our next question is from Patrick Jobin. Your line is now open. Please state your company name. Patrick S. Jobin - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Hi. Credit Suisse. Thanks for taking the question. A question about power plant timing. Some are talking about the ability to push some projects out to 2017 to take advantage of that cost reduction. When you look at your projects for 2016, is that an opportunity for you at all to push out given you're capacity constrained and allocate that volume elsewhere? Then I have one quick follow-up. Thanks. Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah, Patrick, that is the case. So, with the ITC extension, we no longer have to bring all the projects into 2016, so we are definitely considering the timing of our projects. And in fact in Q4, we accelerated a project called Hooper that helped improve our results in Q4. So to answer your question, yes, we have flexibility around timing now and I think is a real benefit to both 2016 and 2017. Patrick S. Jobin - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Got it. And then just a question on Q1's gross margin guidance of 12% to 13%, just help us bridge the sequential change there. Granted your confidence in the full year, I just want to understand what's driving some of that pressure in Q1, if it's mix or what. Thanks. Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Certainly. Yeah, the margin guidance in Q1 is really just mix because effectively, we had a very strong Q4. And if you look at the megawatts deployed, we have a really strong Q1 for megawatts deployed between 315 megawatts and 340 megawatts for Q1, up from Q4 of 280 megawatts. But megawatts recognized comes down. So when the volume recognized is lower than margins, it will come down a little bit because of just absorption. But we look at megawatts deployed and it's a very, very strong quarter. Patrick S. Jobin - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC (Broker): Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Vishal Shah. Your line is now open. Please state your company name.

Vishal B. Shah - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Management

Deutsche Bank. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask you a question on the residential market. Last quarter, you were talking about an ABS deal in the works. Can you maybe just provide an update on where we are with that transaction? And also, some of the other residential companies you're talking about, slightly worse than normal seasonality in Q1. Are you seeing something similar to that in Q1, and how you think about the outlook for the rest of the year? Thank you. Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. Vishal, on the ABS side, yes, our plans would still be to do an ABS transaction. As you'll recall, when we did the 8point3 IPO, we sold a number of leases in our first portfolio to 8point3, so that delayed the timing of our first ABS transaction. We have worked on and have closed a warehouse facility that would lead to ABS takeout. The timing of that is likely early 2017. And so, we're making great cc progress and are looking forward to doing our first deal, but it will be in approximately a year.

Howard Wenger - President, Business Units

Management

Hi, Vishal. This is Howard. We are seeing our business really picking up steam in North America, both residential and commercial. We ended the year in 2015 really strong in Q4, more than 60% growth year-on-year for the residential business. So we're proud of that and proud of the team. And going into Q1 into 2016, we're already in the middle of Q1, and we're off to a really good start. And so we anticipate continued growth faster than the market, so we'll be picking up market share. We picked up market share in 2015, and we anticipate picking up share in 2016. And Q1, we're going to have quarter-on-quarter growth – sorry, year-on-year growth for Q1 2016 relative to Q1 2015 of probably more than 45%, 50%. So, we actually see Q1 being very strong in residential.

Vishal B. Shah - Deutsche Bank Securities, Inc.

Management

That's helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Brian Lee. Your line is now open. Please state your company name. Brian K. Lee - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Hi. It's Goldman Sachs. Thanks, guys, for taking the questions. First one I had was just around the ROFO projects. It seems like some of the project build timelines are moving ahead of schedule. So, is it fair to assume that dropdowns could also be more accelerated versus the original expectations for projects like Henrietta and Stanford? And then what's driving that strategic decision here? And then lastly, given that, what are your latest thoughts around updating the ROFO project list in coming quarters? And then I had a follow-up. Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Okay, Brian. So, I guess our plan was that the ITC would have expired. And so, we were working by accelerating the U.S. projects. And so, that really pulled forward projects like Stanford and Henrietta. Now, I think with the ITC extension, we'll revisit the exact timing of COD. But I don't think that that will ultimately change when we'll sell those to 8point3. So, we've offered our second project to 8point3 officially, and we'll likely do more in the first quarter and second quarter. The bulk of those projects though would happen in Q3. Brian K. Lee - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay. That's helpful. Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: And then regarding the – would we add more to the ROFO, I guess we'll take that question on the 8point3 earnings call. Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: And when we update the ROFO. Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. So, we would do –…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Jeff Osborne. Your line is now open. Please state your company name. Jeffrey Osborne - Cowen & Co. LLC: Yeah, it's from Cowen & Company. I was wondering if you could just touch on the $100 million in OpEx that you mentioned, Chuck, for the quarter. What was that assumption at Analyst Day before the ITC extension? And then what areas internally are you putting some of that investment in? Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I'll take this for a little bit and then Chuck can cover some numbers with you. The investment will be I think what Chuck is going to tell you is pretty materially similar in OpEx, but it'll be shifting from other parts of the world to America partially. We are actually bumping up our spending on our modular technology a little bit. We're bumping up our spending on smart energy, we call it, which is a combination of batteries and energy management. And then we're ramping up our marketing spend. We started that in Q4, and we'll continue that throughout the year. So, those are sort of the three big initiatives and it would be geographic shifting as well. Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: So, guidance at the Analyst Day, we guided a total OpEx of $430 million to $480 million. We've tightened that range a bit with our updated guidance of $430 million to $455 million. And in terms of the quarterly cadence of that, I mentioned in the prepared remarks there would be approximately $100 million quarterly. It'll be a little bit higher in Q1, but it should be on average a little north of $100 million. Jeffrey Osborne - Cowen & Co. LLC: Got it. And congratulations on getting the attractive financing done. Is there any pockets of weakness that you're seeing in financing? Just what the broader concerns investors have with the energy complex. Is that trickling down to any other parts of the financing stack, non-recourse stack, et cetera? You addressed tax equity but maybe just some of the other areas of capital needs would be helpful. Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yeah. The financing markets have been very strong for SunPower, I think as our projects perform and investors see the stability of the long-term earnings. We've seen great demand and just quite frankly terrific partners on the financing side. So the banks that we work with are strong supporters and I think have done a really good job working with SunPower. Jeffrey Osborne - Cowen & Co. LLC: Excellent. Congratulations on the strong results. Charles D. Boynton - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Thank you.

Robert Okunski - Senior Director-Investor Relations

Management

Great. We have time for two more quick ones.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Julien Dumoulin-Smith. Your line is now open. Please state your company name.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - UBS Securities LLC

Management

Good afternoon. UBS. Just wanted to touch base here. There's a lot of talk about 2017. But isn't their procurement cycle really kind of oriented towards 2018 and 2019, given the structure of the ITC and to what end are you seeing that cycle kick start here, even irrespective of the stay of CPP? Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. I think it would be fair to say that for utility scale projects that that's probably material 2018 and 2019. The conversation around utility projects is where your economics is likely to be, and is there significant change in that timeframe. And if there isn't, then there isn't a lot of incentive to wait. So there's a little bit of dynamic around that, but it would be fair to say 2018 and 2019. Where we do see near-term significant activity is with commercial customers. And there are 800 direct access commercial customers that can buy ground-mount systems and get the energy over our transmission lines. It's quite active, and I certainly would expect good activity in that segment in 2017 and then of course the normal commercial business and the residential business. But to your point, large scale power plant, traditional plant, as we know it, is mostly in 2018 and 2019 conversation.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - UBS Securities LLC

Management

What does that mean for margin composition to be clear? Commercial versus... Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, of course, that depends on how fast you want to get – how fast you can get cost down. I'd say that the most aggressive challenges from margins are in the power plant sector, and it's intensely competitive everywhere but mostly in the power plant sector. Our team is proven with the Oasis platform to be able to take cost out. We are working on Oasis 3.0. And then by the way, that was enhanced with some of the technology we got from Cogenra. We expect everything we shipped from 2017 and beyond to be Oasis 3.0 based, and that takes a significant amount of cost out. So, I think compared to legacy PPAs, margins will be down a little bit. But what we've talked about at Analyst Day is certainly what we expect to continue to do. In the distributed generation business, the team has done a great job with what we call complete solutions or an entire solar installation in a kit that is preconfigured, much like Oasis. We call that Helix in commercial that has a significant cost reduction. And that will be shipping during this quarter. And we will announce the residential version of that very soon. So, my color would be on challenging in power plants, consistent with what we said on Analyst Day, and we're optimistic, if not bullish, in the DG segment.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith - UBS Securities LLC

Management

Thank you.

Robert Okunski - Senior Director-Investor Relations

Management

Thanks, Julien. Operator : Thank you. Our final question is from the line of Colin Rusch. Please state your company name. Your line is now open. Colin Rusch - Oppenheimer & Co., Inc. (Broker): Thanks so much. Can you talk a little bit about the gating factors in the emerging markets, obviously with the cost of financing going up pretty dramatically for lower rated credits? I want to hear a little bit about what you're seeing in terms of the demand profile for that P-Series, and what you think the real sticking points are going to be in terms of turning those sales into reality. And then I have a follow-up. Tom H. Werner - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, what we see is that you can produce solar energy as cost competitively with almost any alternative technology and in fact, the majority of new generation in the last year was solar. So, the new and emerging economies are, of course, thirsty for energy and economic energy. So, the pull was there. And as you point out though, there's challenges with the cost of capital and, of course, FX in predicting what the FX rates will be. That I think requires local presence, and it requires sort of a longer-term view, so the traditional sort of two groups of the emerging markets, maybe not so emerging like South Africa and Chile, and then Africa in general and of course, I guess you would put India and China in the prior group. Africa in general, we're optimistic about. We're seeing a lot of activity there, largely because we can partner with Total and they've had a presence in the region for a long time, and we can capitalize on that because of course they know the financing markets really…