First Solar, Inc.

Earnings and 2025 Guidance Call. This call is being webcast live on the Investor section of First Solar's website at investor.firstsolar.com. All participants are in a listen-only mode, and please note that today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Byron Jeffers, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us on today's earnings call. Joining me today are our Chief Executive Officer, Mark Whitmar, and our Chief Financial Officer, Alex Bradley. During this call, we will review our financial performance for 2024, discuss our future business outlook for 2025. Following our remarks, we will then open the call for questions. Before we begin, please note that some statements made today are forward-looking and involve the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations. We undertake no obligation to update these statements due to new information or future events. For discussion of factors that could cause these results to differ materially, please refer to today's earnings press release and our form 10-K filing with the SEC. You can find these documents on our website at investor.fursolar.com. With that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to our CEO, Mark Whitmore. Mark.

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us today. Beginning on slide three, I will share some key highlights from 2024. From a commercial perspective, 2024 saw us sustain a highly selective approach to contracting, which we foreshadowed at the start of the year, securing full year net bookings of 4.4 gigawatts at a base ASP of 30.5 cents per watt, excluding adjusters, India domestic sales and terminations. This led to a year-end contracted backlog of 68.5 gigawatts. We are pleased to have sold a record 14.1 gigawatts of modules in 2024. Our record net sales of $4.2 billion, in line with our prior earnings call guidance, represented a 27% increase year-on-year. Our full-year diluted EPS, which included an after-tax impact of approximately 42 cents per share from the December sale of 2024 section 45X tax credits, which was not included in our October guidance, came in below the low end of our guidance range at $12.02 per share. Alex will provide more detail regarding our 2024 financial results later in the call. From a manufacturing perspective, we produced 15.5 gigawatts in 2024, including 9.6 gigawatts of series six modules, and 5.9 gigawatts of series seven modules. We began producing and selling our first cure modules from our lead line in Ohio in Q4. And we progressed our technology roadmap in 2024, commissioning a new dedicated R&D innovation center in Ohio, featuring a high volume manufacturing scale production pilot line, and began wrapping a new perovskite development line capable of producing small form factor modules at our Perrysburg campus. Our growth continued during 2024 as we exited the year with approximately 21 gigawatts of global nameplate manufacturing capacity, an increase of over 4 gigawatts over 2023, driven by the addition of our new Alabama facility and throughput optimization in Ohio. Additionally, We continue to construct our 1.1 billion Louisiana manufacturing facility over the course of 2024, which remains on track to begin commercial operations in the second half of this year. Once ramped is expected to increase our global nameplate manufacturing capacity to over 25 gigawatts by 2026. Turning to slide four, I would discuss our most recent shipments and bookings. At the end of 2023, our contracted backlog reached 78.3 gigawatts with an aggregate value of 23.3 billion, or approximately 29.8 cents per watt. In 2024, we recognized sales of 14.1 gigawatts and contracted an additional 4.4 gigawatts of net bookings, resulting in a year-end contracted backlog of 68.5 gigawatts with an aggregate value of 20.5 billion, or approximately 29.9 cents per watt. Since our previous earnings call, we have contracted a net 0.5, 0.4 gigawatts of new volume. This includes 0.3 gigawatts in India, approximately 40 megawatts of inventory below our current contracted backlog minimum VIM requirement. The sale was through a non-traditional revenue sharing contracting arrangement with a module distributor. The residual net bookings include 0.6 gigawatts of sales to our traditional US utility scale customer base at an ASP of 30.5 cents per watt, excluding adjusters, or up to 31.4 cents per watt, assuming the realization of adjusters were applicable. Partially offset by 0.5 gigawatts of terminations. For the full year 2024, including our 4.4 gigawatts of net bookings, we're approximately 5.1 gigawatts of gross bookings to our traditional U.S. utility scale customer base at an ASP of 30.9 cents per watt, excluding adjusters, or up to 32.8 cents per watt, assuming the realization of adjusters were applicable. A 0.1 gigawatt of lower bin module sales through the aforementioned distributor, 0.6 gigawatts of domestic India volume, and 1.4 gigawatts of module agreement terminations. In addition, we saw one gigawatt of contract determinations in India, which were included in our contract subject to conditions precedent number, but not in our bookings backlog for total 2024 module contract terminations of 2.4 gigawatts. A substantial portion of our backlog includes opportunities to increase the base ASP through the application of adjusters if we realize achievements within our current technology roadmap as of the expected time in the delivery of the product. By the end of Q4, we had approximately 37.1 gigawatts of contracted volume with these adjusters, which we estimate could generate up to an additional $0.7 billion, or approximately $0.02 per watt, the majority of which would be recognized between 2026 and 2028. This amount does not include potential adjustments which are generally applicable to the total contracted backlog for both the ultimate bin delivered to the customer, which may adjust the ASP under the sales contract upwards or downwards, and for increases in sales rate or applicable aluminum and steel commodity price changes. As reflected in slide five, our total pipeline of potential bookings remains strong, with bookings opportunities totaling 80.3 gigawatts and a decrease of approximately 1.1 gigawatts from the previous quarter. Our mid to late stage bookings opportunity decreased by approximately 2.5 gigawatts to 21 gigawatts and now includes 18.5 gigawatts in North America and 2.3 gigawatts in India. Within our mid to late stage pipeline are approximately 3.9 gigawatts of opportunities that are contracts subject to conditions precedent. As a reminder, signed contracts in India will not be recognized as a booking until we have received full security against the offtake. As stated on previous earnings call, given the long-dated timeframe into which we are now selling, we need to align customer project visibility with our balanced approach to ASPs, payment security, and other key contractual terms. And the uncertainty related to the policy environment from the recent U.S. elections we will continue to leverage our position of strength and our contracted backlog and be highly selective in our approach to new bookings this year. We intend to continue forward contracting with customers who prioritize long-term relationships and appropriately value our points of differentiation. I'll now turn the call over to Alex, who will discuss our Q4 and full year 2024 results. Thanks, Mark.