Canadian Solar Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Canadian Solar's third quarter 2020 earnings conference call. My name is Rachel, and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in the list in Illinois. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the call over to Isabelle Zhang, IR Manager at Canadian Solar. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator, and welcome everyone to Canadian Solar's third quarter 2020 conference call. Please note that we have provided slides to accompany today's conference call, which are available on Canadian Solar's investor relations website. Joining us today are Dr. Shawn Xu, Chairman and CEO, Dr. Hui-Feng Chang, Senior VP and CFO, Ismael Guerrero, Corporate VP and President of Canadian Solar's wholly owned energy business, and Yan Zhuang, President of Canadian Solar's majority-owned subsidiary, CSI Solar Co. Ltd. All company executives will participate in the Q&A session after management's formal remarks. On this call, Sean will go through an overview of Canadian Solar's strategy and provide an update on the listing of CSI Solar. Yen and Ismael will respectively review the highlights of the Module and System Solutions, or MSS, and Energy Businesses, followed by Hui Feng, who will go through the financial results. Sean will conclude the prepared remarks with the business outlook, after which we will have time for questions. Before we begin, may I remind listeners that management's prepared remarks today, as well as their answers to questions, will contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. The company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements that is contained in the private securities litigation reform act of 1995. Actual results may differ from management's current expectations. Any projections of the company's future performance represents management's estimates as of today. Canadian Solar assumes no obligation to update these projections in the future unless otherwise required by applicable law. A more detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties can be found in the company's annual report when Form 20-F files with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Management's prepared remarks will be presented within the requirements of SEC Regulation G regarding generally accepted accounting principles, or GAF. Some financial information presented during the call will be provided on both a GAF and a non-GAF basis. By disclosing certain non-GAF information, management intends to provide investors with additional information to permit further analysis of the company's performance and underlying trends. Management uses non-GAF measures to better assess operating performance and to establish operational goals. Non-GAAP information should not be viewed by investors as a substitute for data prepared in accordance with GAAP. At this time, I would like to turn over the call to Canadian Solar's Chairman and CEO, Dr. Shawn Chu. Shawn, please go ahead.

Thank you, Isabel, and hi, everyone. Welcome and thanks for joining us today. I'm pleased to report a strong set of third quarter results as we achieved 3.2 gigawatt in module shipments, achieved total revenue of 940 million US dollar and gross margin of 19.5%, which was all ahead of our expectations. Turning to the slide three, let me give you a quick update on the progress of the planned China listing of our MSS subsidiary. We successfully completed the pre-IPO equity raising in Q3. This was on schedule and yet brought us one step closer towards qualifying for the IPO in China from a regulatory standpoint. The transaction also brought in important strategic partners and the capital to immediately expand our capacity with the latest solar technology. In terms of timeline, we remain well within our planned schedule, targeting for the IPO next year. We feel good about where we are in the process and believe we are on track to submit the official IPO application by the second quarter of next year. Now, moving to slide four. While the solar market has been volatile over the past year, as a result of COVID-19. I want to congratulate the Canadian Solar Team for its focus, execution, and results. We continue to achieve long-term sustainable growth and returns for shareholders. Our long-term strategy is three-fold. First, on the MSS side, we focus on expanding capacity and increasing the level of vertical integration. This will allow us to gain global market share, enhance pricing power, better control cost and improve profitability. Yan will expand on this point later on. Second, we're expanding our market presence and have identified opportunities in localized large-scale project investment vehicles. These vehicles would hold grid-connected solar energy storage and other clean energy projects developed by our energy business. Leveraging the experience we gain through the public publicly listed Canadian Solar Infrastructure Fund in Japan. We target to launch similar vehicles in Latin America and Europe within the next 12 to 24 months. Ismael will expand on this point. Third, we continue to execute our strategic growth areas. An example of this is the solar PV plus storage market segment where we are reaching key milestones, including recently signing our first large-scale energy storage system supply and service agreement, the 300 megawatt-hour milestone project in California. And there are more to come. On the development side, we also have a large backlog of 1.2 gigawatt hours and an additional pipeline of 4.8 gigawatt hours in storage projects under development. We expect energy storage to start contributing to both revenue and profit over the next few quarters and become and material earnings drivers going forward. Now let me turn over the call to Yan. Yan, please go ahead.