Canadian Solar Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Canadian Solar's fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. My name is Rob, and I'll be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we'll 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, investor relations director at Canadian Solar. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. And welcome everyone to Canadian Solar's fourth quarter 2022 conference call. Please note that we've provided slides to accompany today's conference call, which are available on Canadian Solar's investor relations website, within the events and presentation section. Joining us today are Dr. Sean Chi, Chairman and CEO. Ying Zhuang, President of Canadian Solar's majority-owned subsidiary, CSI Solar. Dr. Huifeng Chen, Senior VP and CFO, and Ismael Guerrero, Corporate VP and President of Canadian Solar's wholly-owned subsidiary, Global Energy. All committee executives will participate in the Q&A session after management's formal remarks. On this call, Sean will go over some key messages for the quarter. Jen and Ismael will respectively review the highlights of the CSI Solar and Global Energy businesses, followed by Huifeng. 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 represent management 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 on Form 20F, followed by 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 GAAP. Some financial information presented during the call will be provided on both a GAAP and a non-GAAP basis. By disclosing certain non-GAAP information, management intends to provide investors with additional information to permit further analysis of the company's performance and underlying trends. Management uses non-GAAP 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. And now, I would like to turn the call over to Canadian Solar's Chairman and CEO, Dr. Shawn Chi. Shawn, please go ahead.

Thank you, Isabelle. And hi, everyone. Welcome and thanks for joining us on our call today. Please turn to page three. 2022 was a record year for Canadian solar in terms of revenue and profit. We grew revenue by 42% to a record $7.5 billion, and we grew net income attributable to shareholders by 152% to a record $240 million. Diluted earnings per share for 2022 was $3.44. I would like to thank both our CSI Solar and Global Energy team for their focus and outstanding work in achieving these results. Before turning the call over to Yan, Ismail, and Huifeng, I would like to give you a higher-level view of what we are seeing. Please turn to page four. If you look at our key financials between 2015 to 2020, you will notice limited revenue and earnings growth as the massive increase in volume was offset by the huge decline in costs and ASP in solar modules. During that period, we put in place strict cost control efforts and invested in R&D to reduce our manufacturing costs while improving our product efficiency and output. This financial discipline and technology focus helped us achieve the critical goal of grid parity and helped make clean energy investment attractive without government subsidies. Today, solar energy is a good investment, both economically and from a sustainability standpoint. This has unlocked a much greater pool of global demand and attracted significant amount of capital into the space. As an integrated manufacturer and a developer, the closer we reach the bottom of the cost curve, the closer we are to translating volume growth into both revenue and earnings growth. If you look at the past two years, raw material costs increased meaningfully due to COVID-related reasons. Recently, some of the raw materials cost have started to decline, such as that of polysilicate, as the new capacities ramp up. But we are not quite at the bottom of the cost curve yet, given the technological innovation in the pipeline that will help us achieve further efficiency gains and cost declines. The key point is that we are getting very close to the bottom of the cost curve, at which point value and technology differentiation will become the predominant drivers of profitability, not cost. With that, we expect to see greater pricing power and operating leverage as our cost structure stabilizes further and the world continues to invest in cleaner energy infrastructure and secure universal access to energy. I think our company and our industry are at a critical turning point and is worth watching very closely. Please turn to the next slide. Before turning the call over to Yan, I want to update you on CSI Solar's Carbide IPO in China. This morning we received the approval for the registration with the China Securities Regulatory Commission. Our auditors are in the process of fully auditing CSI Solar's 2022 financials, and we will update our prospectus once the 2022 financial auditing is completed. Given today's update, we think we are on track to complete the IPO in Q2 of this year. With that, let me now turn to Yan, who will provide more details of our CSI Solar business. Yan, please go ahead. Thanks, Sean.