Nextpower Inc.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the next Trucker First Quarter Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, online is in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you require immediate assistance, please press star zero for the operator. This call is being recorded on Wednesday, July 26, 2023. I would now like to turn the conference over to Don Quinby, Director, Finance and IR. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to NextTracker's earnings conference call for our first quarter fiscal 2024 results. With me today is our Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Dan Sugar, our President, Howard Wenger, and our Chief Financial Officer, Dave Bennett. All three will give brief remarks followed by Q&A. Slides from today's call, as well as a copy of the earnings press release and summary financials, are available on the investor relations section at nexttracker.com. This call is being recorded and will be available for replay on the investor relations section of our website. As a reminder, today's call contains forward-looking statements which are based on our current expectations and assumptions. These statements involve risk, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For a full discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please see the cautionary statements in our presentation, press release, or in the risk factors section of our most recent filings at the FDC. Note, this information is subject to change, and we undertake no obligation to update these four looking statements. Please note, we will provide non-GAAP measures on today's conference call. The full non-gap-to-gap reconciliations can be found in the appendix slides of today's presentation, as well as in the summary financials posted on the investor relations section of our website. All growth metrics will be on a year-over-year basis unless stated otherwise. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to our CEO.

Dan? Thank you for joining us to review our first quarter fiscal 2024 results. With me today are Howard Wenger, President, and Dave Bennett, Chief Financial Officer. Following our remarks, we look forward to your questions. Please turn to slide three. I'm very pleased with our execution and results in Q1 across all key metrics, starting with our financial results. Revenue for the quarter was $480 million, increasing 19% year on year. Our EBITDA for the quarter was $84 million, up over 160% year-on-year. Increased profitability is attributable to pricing discipline, monetization of distinct product features, and improved operational efficiency. We achieved solid positive cash flow for the quarter, further bolstering Nextracker's robust and differentiated liquidity position in the industry. Dave will provide more detail on our financials. We have been relentlessly driving solar technology innovation that provides tangible value to customers in hardware, controls, and software. Our innovation is focused on reducing LCOE, the levelized cost of energy solar power, which supports our customers to increase their project profitability and next tracker to exercise pricing discipline. We have exciting product announcements planned for the major RE Plus trade show in September. We posted another strong quarter of new contract bookings, building upon our booking achievements of last fiscal year. We ended the quarter with new record backlog, over $3 billion, up from $2.6 billion as of the end of fiscal year 2023. Sales momentum continued with repeat business and new customers across diverse and expanding geographies. This is reflected in our strong international performance in the quarter, where over 40% of our revenue was attributable to overseas projects. We were pleased that Wood Mackenzie recently named Nextracker as the global tracker market share leader for 2022 by a significant margin. This is the eighth consecutive year Nextracker has led the industry. Based on our Q1 results and strong industry position, we are increasing our annual revenue and EBITDA guidance as Dave will cover. In our prior earnings call, we quantified progress in LTOE and the growth of solar as today's largest source of new power being added to most grids. And we also reviewed that in the U.S., The IRA provides an attractive 30% investment tax credit level for 10 years with upside for U.S. manufacturing content. Today, I will provide some qualitative comments on market dynamics based on our insights from meeting hundreds of customers at global events last quarter. To give a sense of engagement, at Intersolar Europe last month, over 100,000 people attended the conference. We are seeing strong demand factors driven by cost reduction in solar panels and battery storage combined with performance enhancements in panels, power electronics, and trackers, such as Nextracker's proven true capture technology. In sum, these factors are yielding lower LCOE, and solar is breaking away from fossil and nuclear power at a lower cost, lower risk, faster to deploy resource, even when the cost of battery storage is included, which is now typical in major markets like the USA. In parallel, electricity demand is increasing with the electrification of transportation and end-use demand. In the US, customer pull for locally made components is paired with industrial policy resulting in over 60 new or expanded factory announcements in just the past year for solar and storage. Hundreds of thousands of people are working directly in solar. New factories and growing jobs are providing broad support for the industry. Given solar today provides under 5% of global electric power generation, we envision significant long-term growth as cost-effective solar increases its share of power for the grid, responding to a world where electricity demand keeps increasing and society trends toward decarbonization. Now, turning back to Nextracker, our global supply chain is a key competitive advantage, which we generally map to align to our local markets. This ecosystem comprises about 50 partners across 16 countries and five continents. To serve our ongoing growth, Nextracker is continuing to collaborate with our valued subcontractors to increase our global manufacturing footprint. I will cover our U.S. position shortly. After we reported our Q4 results, the U.S. Department of Treasury issued guidance regarding IRAs, domestic content provisions. Receiving these rules clarifications was incrementally helpful for Nextracker, and we continue to work with our customers and trade associations to further clarify the requirements. We continue to exclude potential IRA impacts from our guidance, pending definitive clarifications and market response. After quarter end, we completed a successful secondary offering of Nextracker stock to the market, allowing our pre-IPO shareholders to reduce their ownership and increase the liquidity of our stock. Following the transaction, Flex owns less than 52% of Nextracker shares. The headwinds noted previously regarding solar panel availability and permitting delays for electrical interconnection and project construction starts still exist and are likely to continue for the intermediate term, though there is tangible progress on U.S. solar panel availability. Slide four, accelerating our U.S. manufacturing suppliers has been a key objective. I'm pleased that ramping the 25 gigawatts of contract capacity is on track. Last quarter, we celebrated a new plant opening in Memphis, Tennessee with our legacy supply partner, MSS. Joining in the plant dedication was our customer, Silicon Ranch Corporation. who awarded us a second volume commitment agreement of three gigawatts during the event, a key raw material supplier, UF Steel, and the CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a key trade association driving solar policy. At this public opening, Nextracker finished goods were on the floor, ready to ship to regional job sites underscoring our ability to quickly scale with our partners. Our focus in the U.S. continues to be sourcing from electric arc furnace mills that are significantly lower carbon than most overseas steel production. We are continuing to build our supply chain and next month are planning another strategic supply announcement. We now have over 10 manufacturing facilities with dedicated Nextracker lines in the United States. And now I'll turn the call over to Howard to expand upon our commercial progress.