This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk05: Good morning and welcome to the Pineapple Energy first quarter 2023 conference call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. All participants are in listen-only mode. For opening remarks and introduction, I would like to turn the call over to Gary Dvorak of Blue Shirt Group. Mr. Dvorak, please go ahead.
spk00: Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Pineapple Energy's conference call to discuss results for the first quarter of 2023. With me today are Kyle Udsepp, our Chief Executive Officer, and Eric Engeltsen, our Chief Financial Officer. Our call this morning will include statements that speak to the company's expectations, outlook, and predictions in the future, which are considered forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond our control, which may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed and implied by these statements. We're not obliged to revise or update any forward-looking statements except as may be required by law. Please refer to our disclosures regarding risk factors and forward-looking statements in today's earnings release and other SEC filings. A copy of our press release has been posted to the investor relations page of our website for reference. The non-GAAP financial measures discussed in this call are reconciled to the U.S. GAAP equivalent and can be found in the press release that we issued last night. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Kyle Edson. Kyle, go ahead.
spk02: Thanks, Gary, and thanks to everyone for joining us on the call today. Our first full quarter with Sonation was highly successful, with strong results company-wide coming ahead of our own internal plan. Sonation continued its momentum while AGC delivered a very solid quarter, demonstrating great resiliency to quickly and fully recover from the December permitting challenges we spoke about on the last call. We entered a second quarter with great momentum and an integrated national business that is poised to continue both organic growth and acquisitions. Let's start in Hawaii, where we grew substantially versus both last year and last quarter on the key forward-looking metric of kilowatts sold. Installations declined sequentially, which is the normal seasonal pattern in Hawaii. But much more importantly, residential kilowatts installed in Q1 were up 14% versus Q1 of 2022, which is a great result that over-delivered versus budget. Battery attach rate in Hawaii remained outstanding at 85%. Our team there has years of experience helping homeowners choose solar paired with battery storage. The regulatory framework and local incentives in Hawaii are different than New York and more conducive to batteries, yet upcoming changes in the Long Island market should soon favor battery attachments there as well. Transferring this knowledge to our sonation team from the experts at HEC should pay dividends in the quarters ahead as we increase battery attach rate versus the current low single-digit rate. Turning now to our New York business, Sanation's momentum was strong in the quarter as well. Kilowatts sold were up around 30% versus last year, outstanding growth that resulted from our strong value proposition for homeowners on Long Island and in New York City, combined with solid execution from our Sanation team. Despite the usual winter weather challenges, kilowatts installed were up 65% versus last year, which was the biggest driver of our consolidated revenue growth. Notably, Sanation recently achieved a major milestone, crossing 100 megawatts of lifetime solar installed. I'm grateful for the hard work of the team we have at Sanation. We are going to keep our foot on the gas to deliver strong growth throughout the year, or I guess I should say, keep our foot on the accelerator of the electric vehicle. As the quarter end, we have an estimated 38 million worth of pending installations, giving us good visibility on revenue. That backlog, which should all be installed before year end, close to half of our 2023 revenue guidance. The strong performance in Q1 gives us even greater confidence in our stated full-year revenue range of 80 to 85 million. With the overperformance in Q1 versus our plan, we're now trending to the top of that range versus the midpoint. This revenue growth and better profitability enabled us to reach an important goal earlier than planned. On the last earnings call, we stated our objective to cross the positive cash flow from operations in the second half of 2023. In fact, we had positive operating cash flow from continuing operations this Q1. This is a really important achievement, and it looks great on a spreadsheet and in a press release. But to me personally, even more important is what it represents. We've been on this journey to sustainability as a company for almost two and a half years now, since I founded the business in November of 2020. And now we've gotten there ahead of schedule. It's something I think we all take pride in here, and I'm grateful to all of our Pineapple employees for their hard work in getting us to this point. It's a destination, but also just the starting point for the next phase of the company's life. We are continuing to build on this momentum, and we have tremendous optimism for the rest of the year and for the future of Pineapple. The financials are, of course, key, but our achievements in the quarter extended beyond the numbers as well. A key element of our strategy in the east is to penetrate the new build market, and we got traction there with a contract to outfit homes in a subdivision being built by a leading local real estate developer, Fading Hollow. The initial deal is small at 25 homes, but it is sophisticated because we will install full smart energy systems. This means rooftop solar, battery storage, other efficiency systems to smart light bulbs, and a home energy management control system. As Baiting sees initial success in sales, we anticipate selling more of these smart home energy packages to them and other developers, both on Long Island and around the country. Even as the nation manages its current rapid growth, we are thinking ahead, especially in terms of workforce. In some parts of the country and for some solar companies, high growth from heavy customer demand is bumping up against shortages in skilled field labor. While we have not experienced these shortages ourselves, we always want to be proactive. A great example of this is Brian Karp, one of our leaders at Sonation, who spearheaded a public-private partnership with Suffolk Community College to train people for solar industry jobs. This joint training program will graduate people with the technical skills to succeed in our industry, ready to contribute on day one in various roles. This is a great example of how public-private partnerships can drive economic growth and better the lives of our local community. Finally, I want to share a big win for our e-gear subsidiary in Hawaii. We licensed our energy management controller, or EMC, to Iguana, who is a seasoned vendor of solar-paired battery energy storage systems. Our EMC is a critical component, and this deal holds the promise of high-volume sales of our EMC. A key part of this deal is that it is capital light. We licensed the design to Iguana, but they will build it. We will collect royalty revenue on a per-unit basis. This deal is a great starting point for us to gain traction on the devices side, which is a high-margin complement to our installation business. We are very excited about the prospects for this segment. With that, I'll now turn the call over to our CFO, Eric Engelson, to walk through our financials. Eric, please go ahead.
spk03: Thank you, Kyle. And I would also like to express gratitude to our employees in New York and Hawaii and and Minneapolis for all of their hard work that has led to the results that we are presenting here in the first quarter. I will very quickly review the GAAP financials as required by the SEC, then review some pro forma numbers that will give you a better sense of the performance of our business. The GAAP numbers are not insightful because Q1 results last year consisted of only three days of operations post merger with CSI. Let's start with the first quarter 2023 GAAP results which includes a full contribution quarter from Senation. Keep in mind that the legacy CSI businesses, JDL and Assessa, are reported as discontinued operations. Revenue was $22 million in the quarter, up 28% from the fourth quarter. Gross profit was $8 million in the first quarter, up 60% from the fourth quarter. Operating expenses were $10.2 million, up 19%, from the fourth quarter, and net loss from continuing operations was $2.6 million, which includes $1.3 million of amortization expense and an $825,000 unfavorable fair value remeasurement of earn-out consideration. Revenue in the first quarter of 2022 was de minimis at $232,000. Now let's summarize our first quarter pro forma results. which assume we owned HEC, E-Gear, and Senation for the full quarter in 2022. The comparisons are all year over year. Pro forma revenue was up 60% from $13.8 million last year, with HEC up 39% and Senation up 68%. Pro forma net loss of $2.6 million improved 53 percent from the prior year net loss of 5.4 million, which included 2.7 million of transaction costs. Pro forma adjusted EBITDA of positive $367,000 improved 142 percent from negative $871,000 in the prior year. Pro forma adjusted EBITDA includes adjustments for amortization expense of $1.3 million, an unfavorable fair value remeasurement of earn out consideration of $825,000, an unfavorable fair value remeasurement of the contingent value rights of $250,000, and other items such as interest income, interest expense, depreciation, taxes, stock compensation, and a gain on sale of assets. Turning to the balance sheet, which represents GAAP figures, we ended the quarter in good shape. Cash available for use in our operating business was $3.4 million. We had another $4.2 million of restricted cash and liquid investments, which is reserved for the contingent value right holders. We plan to raise capital in 2023 to refinance debt and fund acquisitions. Our performance in Q1 gives us confidence in our previously stated full-year revenue range and ability to generate meaningful cash flow from continuing operations this year. Now we would like to open the call for any questions.
spk06: Operator, please go ahead.
spk05: Let's see. Our first question comes from the line of Donovan Schaefer of Northern Capital Market. Please go ahead.
spk07: Hey guys, thanks for taking the questions. I see you, you know, you reiterated the full year guidance and it was nice to hear about, you know, the bookings you have that gives you some visibility there. I'm curious for, you know, those kinds of, I guess, that backlog or in progress installation. Can you give us any color on kind of your sense of the cadence for the year? the remainder of the year um you know trending as we head into the second quarter should we expect you know steady sequential growth year uh quarter you know quarter order quarter through the year or you know like a seasonal dip in the fourth quarter or anything like that just trying to figure out kind of the shape through the year yeah sure good morning donovan thanks for for being on um early on the west coast for sure uh
spk02: It's a good question, and it's one that we work through internally on our forecasts as well. And every market is different, but certainly in Hawaii, but even in New York as well, you tend to see installation volumes and revenue build throughout the year. Q4 is a really strong quarter, and then Q1 declined sequentially. We saw that here as well. I believe we were down 5% or something like that sequentially on revenue. But that is a smaller decline than we would have anticipated previously. And when we reference over delivery versus our internal plan, we had a stronger Q1 because there was less of a kind of seasonal dip. I think there are some maybe one-time idiosyncratic factors on that, both in Hawaii, we talked about that. Department of Planning and permitting issue in December on the last call that delayed some of the revenue that should have installed been recognized last December instead Pushed forward into q1. Similarly. We had something not quite as big but In New York there were I think it was eight or ten or twelve jobs We had modules sitting in a shift in port. They couldn't get in So there should have been installed in December and got pushed to q1. So I think that I In a typical year, you would have seen relatively more in the last Q4 and relatively less in this first Q1. But really happy with the growth overall in the year over year in Q1. You know, I think as we look at Q2, Q3, Q4, in secular terms, like, yeah, Q2 will be higher than Q1, Q3 will be higher than Q2, and Q4 will be higher than Q3, and then it'll dip back down to Q1. because of some of those one-time shifts that I just mentioned from old Q4 into this Q1, we don't really want to give quarter-to-quarter guidance, but, you know, it would be reasonable to expect Q2 to not see quite as big of a ramp-up over Q1 as you might in another year. But, yeah, just the shape of the curve throughout the year is, like you said, kind of sequential growth up to Q4 and then a big Q4 and then – a little bit of a decline to Q1 of 2024, although because we're overall on the up and to the right trajectory organically, that's going to be muted a bit.
spk07: Okay, that's helpful. And then I want to also talk about battery attachment rates. You know, you guys gave that as, I think, 40% in the press release, which is great. And then you also mentioned Hawaii is at 85%. And so I'm wondering, if we can kind of think about it in like a pro forma, like apples to apples, how things are trending broadly. I think the attachment rate's a lot lower in some nations. So if you kind of take pro forma, maybe that's not even, maybe that's too confusing because they're kind of the opposite ends of the spectrum. But are you seeing a general improving trend? Is it basically saturated in Hawaii and so you don't really get improvement there, but trying to move SunAge in that direction? And if you could talk about the policy, it sounds like you said there's a policy or some kind of a change in Long Island that would drive more attachment there.
spk02: Yeah, definitely. And some of it's just the math, like how you get to the 40% is just the weighted average of like the high rate in Hawaii and the lower rate in New York. And, you know, so we kind of tend to view each of those in their own standalone silo, but then depending on the relative install volumes or sales volumes, whichever metric you're looking at, you'll get to that weighted average. And even then in Hawaii, that itself is a weighted average. You have approaching 100% battery attached rate on a new green field or green roof or whatever you'd call it, a brand new install on a roof that doesn't have any solar on it already. And it's been that way in that market for at least five years when the PUC switched over to a non-export tariff. It really only became economic to continue doing solar if you paired it with battery storage so you could self-consume your own excess. And so what you have is almost every brand new solar install on Oahu has a battery paired with it. But you do have a healthy business of retrofitting and upsizing old systems that are grandfathered in under the prior tariffs, so included in some of that is PV that we're putting on to those older systems that don't have batteries. So even that 85% is a weighted average of like 99.9% and 0%. In Long Island, it's low single digits, right? It's like 5% or less than that. And I think we all look at that and think there's a ton of opportunity to grow there. You know, I mentioned this 100 megawatt install. I was out there two weeks ago with the team at the customer's home. It was really a tremendous event. And I got to see the good work the crew was doing in real time, but also walk with the homeowner and tour the house. And so it's the panels on the roof that a Tesla Powerwall in the garage. They also had installed a span panel with us, as well as a span EV charger. And they'd recently switched over to a heat pump, which we don't yet install, but it's something that we talk about and potentially on our roadmap as well. So this was a homeowner who was really going down that electrify everything path. And I talked to him about the battery and why the husband and wife had made that decision. And they said, well, under the current policies with the utility here, it doesn't necessarily pencil just on an ROI. but there's enough incentives and value streams in place that it's not that much more expensive when you net it all up over the life of it. And I just really think of this as future-proofing the house. So I think more and more that is becoming top of mind there, and people are thinking more proactively. And then on top of that, the bigger change that we've mentioned is they're switching to time of use rates in that electric utility territory. And I'm not 100% sure on the timing, but it'll come within the next 12 months. And there were even a couple of the utility execs at this ceremony. And I think everybody just had a lot of excitement for this switch where it just makes it much more economic to pair battery storage with solar. So I think you've got the confluence of supportive regulatory and public policy with momentum starting where this is no longer like the bleeding edge. It's kind of getting to the cutting edge. And then you get into the early majority. I think that's starting to come. just combined with our own opportunity to continue sharing best practices and kind of spreading the knowledge transfer from Hawaii, who's just really great at talking to homeowners about this and how to think about it and understand different consumer needs. So we're optimistic about the battery growth we're going to see in New York.
spk05: Thank you. If you have a question, you can press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Chip Moore of EFC. Please go ahead.
spk04: Morning. Hey, thanks for taking the question, Kyle and Eric. Hey, Chip. Hey, Kyle. And congrats on that positive cash flow milestone. That's great to see. I guess similar to the question around the revenue cadence, maybe speak to sustainability of that near term. Was there anything in terms of mix or anything else that you know, was an outsized help in the quarter? And, you know, is your full year outlook, you know, even higher than say you thought when we talked in Q4?
spk06: Yeah, I think we talked about this internally yesterday.
spk02: And, you know, some of this is that we, the last time we spoke wasn't actually that long ago. You know, you think in your head you're going to do this every quarter. And so it'll be three months between these. But our prior call was on March 31st. And so we had pretty good line of sight. into Q1 revenue at that point, even though the results we were sharing were just through 1231. But top line was great. You know, some of it was some of those one-time non-recurring shifts I talked about, about delays at the end of December in both businesses that spilled over into Q1. I think that we were, you know, we over-delivered a bit, just broad-based in both markets on top of funnel demand, lead generation, our ability to gain more than our share, conversion rates on leads into sales, being efficient at getting those through the pipeline. It was just kind of an across-the-board win, and then we managed to control costs as well and I think be a little bit ahead of the curve on some of the cost containment and some of the synergy efforts. And so, you know, from that standpoint, I think it's definitely sustainable. We're on track. and when you give guidance, you know, it's kind of the expected value of it, and we're just a bit ahead of schedule on kind of a lot of metrics across the board. So I guess that's what I'd say on that. I think the margin performance is certainly sustainable, and I think we're set up for a really good rest of the year.
spk04: That's great, Kyle, and I guess the follow-on there is, Given that and that visibility on the fundraising side and with some of the near-term obligations, how have those options progressed and does this open up some more opportunity in that realm?
spk02: Yeah, great question. I suppose we didn't touch on fundraising much in the script. I think that... Talk about debt, talk about equity. Both paths are available to us. I think when we look at the stock price right now, don't love where it's at. That dilution is not appealing. I feel like we've got good line of sight and a great slate of initiatives to continue creating value for the company, putting wins on the board and hopefully driving that up before we really tap that as the capital raising source. So then you look at debt, and I think that we've been engaged in multiple conversations ongoing with different lenders. I think that we had a really solid model we had confidence in for the year previously, and then this strong performance in Q1 just reinforces that and makes it even more appealing. So don't have any specific detail to share on that right now, but I'll say that the operating results of the business give us confidence that we're going to be a really appealing credit for multiple different lenders.
spk05: Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Gramp of Alliance Global Patterns. Please go ahead.
spk01: Morning, guys.
spk05: Hi, Jeff.
spk01: Morning. Understanding the comments that you guys are expecting a continuation of the gross margins, can we kind of peel the onion back there a little bit more? What do you see as kind of the main drivers if I just look? understanding on the gap numbers, you're a little noisy quarter to quarter, but like the incremental margins look pretty impressive Q4 to Q1. So just kind of wondering if you can kind of talk on the main drivers, uh, impacting the gross margins.
spk06: Yeah.
spk03: Yeah, sure. So sequentially, um, our gross margins were up on a gap basis, 60%. Um, you know, a lot of that has to do with showing a full quarter of senation. in the first quarter that was not presented in the fourth quarter of last year. If you do peel the onion back a little bit, margins are fairly consistent if you look at the pro forma numbers. You did see a slight increase in price per watt installed sequentially from the fourth quarter to the first quarter. Cost of goods, our outlook on that is that panel costs will stay flat or even decline. We are confident in maintaining healthy margins going forward.
spk06: Awesome.
spk01: That's great to hear. I appreciate that. Kyle, I'm curious, given your background, obviously strong marketing, sales, customer experience, when you guys are looking at M&A opportunities, how much time do you guys kind of spend thinking about okay here's you know an interesting brand um but we don't think they're doing you know xyz as efficiently as you know we at pineapple could and maybe kind of lean into an opportunity where you see a lot of um you know synergies or opportunities for improvement versus say buying a brand that's already you know operating pretty efficiently like how much time do you guys kind of spend on that? And maybe kind of leaning into some opportunities to, to improve a brand versus say buying a brand that's already, you know, operating efficiently. How do you evaluate those trade-offs?
spk02: Yeah, Jeff, I think that's a great question. And I think that we spend a lot of time on it and, you know, there are multiple different lenses. We view any potential acquisition or merger partner through, you know, different criteria we look at diligence. I think there's, Kind of a general size criteria that we think the juice is going to be worth the squeeze on going through audit, going through diligence, but not too big where it presents potential integration risk with the business. We have a lot of confidence about the model, but we don't want to get overconfident and have hubris about it. And we want to make sure we can integrate the next one and the one after that, as well as we've been able to integrate Hawaii and New York. So it's kind of that size component. Certainly a financial component. You know, we look at businesses that have around, you know, or even better than our current blended gross margin. Like that gross margin is really important for us. So is cost containment and managing the business well for cash flow. So that EBITDA margin is important. We look at the multiples that we can pay for it because we've got to make sure it's a creative and we can fundraise for it. We look at cultural fit, which is a huge thing for us because of that integration. But also we just want somebody who shares that vision. And that's what we found is, you know, the companies that fit on a lot of the other dimensions, they tend to like us and we tend to like them. So I think those are all really important. But the customer acquisition piece of it is so, so critical. And in my view, and I think we all share this view here, and it's in a way like our thesis, The companies that are committed to delivering the great customer experience are the companies that are going to win over time, as we're still in just the early innings of this energy transition and on this path to electrifying everything. So it's not just producing the power on your roof. It's producing it and then storing it in the batteries in your home. It's consuming it in your home with more and more devices electrifying induction cooktops, air source heat pumps, geothermal heat pumps. It's mobility, electric vehicles with the charger, so you produce the energy, you store the energy, you consume the energy, you move the energy around, and then ultimately you also sell it back to the grid in virtual power plants or grid services revenue. The crux of all of that is that the company that has the trusted relationship with the homeowner and is the closest to that homeowner is going to win. And so you do the acquisition cost one time, but then you deepen the relationship and grow the lifetime value of the customer to those upsell, cross-sell, and ancillary opportunities. And so a company that isn't committed to that customer experience, doesn't view things the same way, doesn't have high referral rates right now, has high cancellation rates, those are not appealing to us. So we spend a ton of time on that. Those are some of our key metrics when we look at these businesses. Some of it is just making sure we find ones that are there already. And then I think to your point, we do believe that, and it's kind of the broader shared services model and extends beyond the sales and marketing. That's my background, but Eric's got tremendous background in driving synergies through shared services and integrating acquisitions on the finance and accounting and kind of back office functions too. So there's different synergy paths. But I think, yeah, our view of... kind of optimizing lead generation. What lead sources do you prioritize? How do you kind of do this inverted pyramid of starting with the lower cost ones? How do you performance manage sales for conversion? How do you just really keep a close eye on those unit economics around CAC and LTV? Definitely something we look at. And I guess the only other thing I'd say at the end of this maybe long response is maybe when I say all this, it sounds like it's going to be hard to clear all those hurdles. And we are discerning, certainly. But there are over 4,000 sales and installation companies in this long and medium tail. And there's an abundant set of opportunities to find these right companies and bring them in, even that meet all those high bars that we just mentioned.
spk05: Thank you. Again, if you would like to ask a question, press the star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Seeing no more questions in queue, let me turn the call back to Kyle for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
spk02: Thank you, Operator. Before we conclude, I want to mention some investor relations events we have coming up. Next Tuesday, we'll be in New York for one-on-one meetings at the Credit Suisse Renewables and Utilities Conference. Then in early June, we'll present on a U.S. residential solar panel and hold one-on-one meetings at the Cowan Sustainability Week Conference, which is virtual. Those are private events for the clients of each brokerage firm, so please contact your sales rep to register and schedule meetings. Let me now wrap up the call. We're excited by the strong start to 2023 and are confident we will sustain this solid performance. We have great organic growth momentum, and while we didn't spend as much time in the scripted portion talking about M&A, that organic growth continues to be core to our strategy. We've been working diligently on sourcing our next acquisitions, and there are abundant opportunities to bring in complementary businesses with strong financial profiles and a great cultural fit with Pineapple. We've reached the point where our national business has substantial revenue with positive cash flow from operations, is run by an experienced management team, and is building a pipeline of potential acquisitions to drive further growth. We look forward to reporting our progress at our next earnings call in August. Thank you again for joining us today and for your continued support. If you have any questions, please contact me, Eric, or Gary and Jenny with our investor relations team. This concludes our call today. You may all
Disclaimer