First Solar, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to First Solar's third quarter 2026 earnings conference 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 call over to your host, Byron Jeffers, Head of Investor Relations.

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. With me today are Mark Widmar, Chief Executive Officer, and Alex Bradley, Chief Financial Officer. Mark will begin with an update on the business, followed by Alex with our financial results and outlook. Before we begin, today's discussion will include forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Additional information regarding these risks and uncertainties can be found in our earnings press release other SEC filings, and the earnings material available on our investor relations website at investor.ferrosolar.com. We undertake no obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements as a result of new information or future events. During today's call, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are provided in our earnings press release and accompanying presentations. We encourage investors to review those reconciliations as non-GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation or a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. With that, I'll turn it over to Mark.

Thank you and good afternoon. Getting on slide four, we continue to execute with discipline this past quarter, advancing our U.S. manufacturing expansion, cure deployment, and perovskite R&D program. while delivering strong financial results. We generated approximately $1.2 billion in net sales, expanded gross margin to approximately 58%, and delivered adjusted EBITDA of $744 million. Operationally, our continued cure deployment across the fleet is being executed through a disciplined learning space approach that began with our Perrysburg Series 6 conversion in Q1 of this year. That approach now extends to our first Series 7 conversion at our India facility, expected to begin in the first quarter of 2027, which marks the start of Series 7 cure replication across the fleet. Beginning in India allows us to first refine the deployment process in a low earnings impact environment before replicating across our US Series 7 fleet. During the subsequent US conversions, Assuming a supportive trade environment, India front-end output is planned to be flexed to supply U.S. facilities, supporting U.S. back-end throughput, and preserving partial domestic content and Section 45X eligibility production during the transition. Accordingly, India's finished goods production in 2027 is expected to range from 2.2 gigawatts to 2.6 gigawatts. The PACE and sequencing the subsequent Series 7 U.S. conversions will be informed by learnings from the India launch, consistent with the discipline learning space approach we have taken across all periods of technology transition. In South Carolina, our Series 6 finishing facility is being brought online in two phases as part of an integrated manufacturing flow from Vietnam. The first phase started production in Q3. Second phase is expected to reach commercial launch in mid-2027. As we previously shared, we delayed the second phase by approximately one quarter so that the cure could be incorporated at commercial launch. Together, these two phases are expected to result in 2027 South Carolina production of 2.2 to 2.5 gigawatts. Beyond CURE, we continue to advance our next generation technology roadmap. Our Ohio pilot line, designed to produce series six size perovskite modules, remains on track to reach operational readiness in the first half of 2027. We expect this line will enable field deployment of modules to further capture learnings and validate the manufacturing performance and durability profile of this next generation thin film technology. before we undertake broader scaling decisions. Our licensing agreement with Cubic PV announced earlier today, together with our previously announced intellectual property agreement with Oxford PV, continues to support the development roadmap, providing access to foundational perovskite IP as we advance our technology roadmap. Turning to the market environment on slide five, The Section 232 Proclamation issued in August represents a meaningful shift for U.S. solar manufacturing, and we believe First Solar is well-positioned to benefit as this shift takes effect. Combined with fundamentals such as continued demand strength from load growth and data center expansions, we see a long-term opportunity to translate this position into earnings growth. Section 232 represents a structural change in how the United States approaches solar manufacturing. As the U.S. competes for global leadership in artificial intelligence and the emerging low-Earth orbit economy, secure and affordable power will be foundational to both. The country cannot afford to depend on adversarial nations where technologies and supply chains are increasingly central to our long-term economic prosperity and national security. As a technology company and the only fully integrated utility-scale solar manufacturer without dependency on a Chinese crystalline silicon supply chain, we believe we are structurally positioned to benefit from this environment. Note by 2027, nearly 80% of our global module manufacturing footprint will be located in the U.S. Long-term demand fundamentals also remain strong.