SunPower has unveiled its financial results for its first quarter ended March 29th, 2015. Its revenue and net income both decreased from the previous quarter and the same quarter of 2014. However, the company remains positive toward its business in 2015 as it believes their yieldco and partnerships will be beneficial.
The GAAP revenue was US$440.9 million, decreasing from US$692.4 million in 1Q14 and US$1,164.2 million in 4Q14. With lower gross margin, its GAAP net loss in 1Q15 was US$ 9.6 million, rapidly decreased from 4Q14 and 1Q14.
SunPower’s president and CEO, Tom Werner, explained that the company continues implementing next generation cell technology in the new Fab 4 cell manufacturing facility. The financial decrease came from the company’s global downstream strategy for prompting high efficiency products in both power plant and distributed generation segments, which are expected to remain strong in 2015. The foreseen strong demand convinces SunPower of an optimistic year.
Tom Werner said, "For the quarter, our power plant segment was the main driver of our performance. In North America, our 579- MWac Solar Star projects for Berkshire Hathaway Energy and Southern California Edison remain on plan for substantial completion this quarter with more than 500MWac now connected to the grid. Construction of our 135-MW Quinto solar project is proceeding, and with expected completion scheduled in the fourth quarter.”
SunPower plans to work on the joint venture YieldCo vehicle, 8point3 Energy Partners, with First Solar. Some international solar projects will be ground broken in this year, such as the 70MW Salvador merchant solar power plant in Chile and the 86MW Prieska project in South Africa. SunPower’s expansion in partnership with Apple into China will also be conducted step by step.
"Strong execution and demand for our high efficiency technology enabled us to meet our financial targets for the quarter as we further invested in our fab capacity, Smart Energy solutions and holdco strategy," said Chuck Boynton, SunPower CFO. "We successfully managed our balance sheet during the quarter as we retired our $250 million convertible bond and added assets to our holdco project portfolio. We were also pleased to publicly file our initial S-1 registration statement related to our proposed YieldCo vehicle, 8point3 Energy Partners. With our significant global pipeline, proposed joint YieldCo vehicle, focus on cost control and investments in new technology and partnerships, we believe we are well-positioned for success in 2015."
SunPower will host a conference call at 1:15 p.m. Pacific Time. The call will be webcast and can be accessed from SunPower's website at investors.sunpower.com/events.cfm.