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spk07: Good morning and welcome to Sunova's fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded and we have allocated an hour for prepared remarks and question and answer. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Rodney McMain, Vice President, Investor Relations at Sunova. Thank you. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thank you, Operator. Before we begin, please note during today's call, we will make forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties that are described in our slide presentation earnings press release in our 2022 Form 10-K. Please see those documents for additional information regarding those factors that may affect these forward-looking statements. Also, we will reference certain non-GAAP measures during today's call. Please refer to the appendix of our presentation, as well as the earnings press release for the appropriate GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliations and cautionary disclosures. On the call today are John Berger, Synovus Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Robert Lane, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. I will now turn the call over to John.
spk14: Good morning, and thank you for joining us. Sunova is in the best position we have ever been in, thanks to our energy as a service business model and strong balance sheet. While others have cautioned about slowdowns in growth, demand for our energy services has never been stronger. Sunova's ability to provide customers with lower energy costs, higher reliability, and energy independence all while offering a wide array of service offerings and unparalleled customer service has allowed us to actively take market share and expand our total addressable market. On slide three is a summary of our financial metrics for a full year 2022. Both adjusted EBITDA and the principal and interest we collect from solar loans fell within our most recent full year guidance ranges. Slide four showcases the continued growth in Synovus customers battery penetration, and dealer network. During the fourth quarter, we placed a record 33,000 customers into service, which brought our total customer additions in 2022 to 87,000 and brought our total solar power generation under management to 1.8 gigawatts. These full-year customer additions represented a 62% customer growth rate year over year and equaled the midpoint of our guidance. Included in our fourth quarter customer additions were approximately 6,900 high-margin service-only customers. While most in the industry have ignored existing seller customers in need of repairs, we see great value in these orphaned customers as they require little to no capital, create opportunities for future upsells, leverage our extensive service footprint, and are immediately additive and highly accretive to our adjusted EBITDA. We expect continued strong growth in this customer class as those non-Senova systems that were sold without a service agreement age across the country. We have seen the strong demand for our energy services carry into the new year, as customer originations last month were approximately 125% higher than in January of last year, a trend that continues. While investors may be concerned that growing macroeconomic challenges could weaken residential solar growth, Our business model has enabled us to navigate those challenges while also increasing our market share and total addressable market through our Synova Adaptive Home and Synova Adaptive Business offerings. Additionally, our battery penetration rate continues to grow and reached 15.2% as of December 31st, 2022. Inclusive of over 2,500 battery retrofits, we have performed life to date. In the fourth quarter, we further eclipsed our year-end target of dealers, sub-dealers, and new homes installers, ending the year with well in excess of 1,000 dealers. Finally, we have updated our customer contract life and expected cash inflows. As of December 31, 2022, the weighted average contract life remaining on our customer contracts equal 22.3 years and expected cash inflows from those customers over the next 12 months increased to half a billion dollars, an increase of 30% from December 31st, 2021. Our ability to deliver on these metrics, despite various macroeconomic headwinds and significant growth investments, is a testament to the strength of our energy as a service business model and our unwavering focus on long-term contracted cash flows. I will now hand the call over to Rob, who will walk you through our financial highlights.
spk12: Thank you, John. Starting on slide six, you will see the continuous improvement in our financial results over the past several years. Our 2022 revenue was over five times greater than our 2018 revenue. All over the same period, adjusted EBITDA nearly tripled, and the principal and interest we collected from solar loans increased by more than a factor of 10. Slide seven summarizes our 2022 financing activity and current liquidity position. The financing transactions completed in 2022 included $552 million in tax equity funds, $1.1 billion in asset backed securitizations, $600 million of convertible debt, a $575 million loan warehouse restructuring, and a $690 million warehouse restructuring for our leases and power purchase agreements. While on November 2022 securitization priced to the yield above prior securitizations, our weighted average cost of debt issuance remains in the 400 basis points range at 4.5%. Additionally, more recent data points indicate that the cost of capital is potentially stabilizing for our industry, while monopoly utility rates have continued to increase, giving us and our dealers headroom to expand our unlevered returns. Included in our $664 million of liquidity as of December 31st, 2022, are both our restricted and unrestricted cash, as well as the available collateralized liquidity we could draw upon from our tax equity and warehouse credit facilities. Given available unencumbered assets as of December 31st, 2022, this available collateralized liquidity equals $118 million. Beyond that, subject to available collateral, we had $360 million of additional capacity in our warehouses and open tax equity funds at year end. Combined, these amounts represent nearly $1 billion of liquidity available exclusive of any additional tax equity funds, securitization closures, in the money interest rate hedges, or further warehouse expansions in 2023. On slide eight, you will see our fully burdened unlevered return on new origination increase to 10% as of December 31st, 2022, based on the trailing 12 months. On a quarter-to-date basis, this return equaled 11% as of December 31st, 2022, an increase of 230 basis points since December 31st, 2021. The implied spread for the trailing 12 months remained unchanged in the prior quarter as the increase in our fully burdened unlevered return was offset by a higher weighted average cost of debt primarily driven by our November 2022 securitization. Our current view of the capital market suggests that the implied spread today has increased back to above 500 basis points, and we expect this spread to approach 600 basis points in the coming months. Slide 9 reflects the strong growth we have seen in our gross contracted customer value and net contracted customer value, or NCCV. At a 4% discount rate, wherein we originated our triple-double-triple plan, NCCV was $2.9 billion, an increase of 37% compared to December 31, 2021. Our December 31, 2022 NCCV at this discount rate equates to approximately $10,300 per customer and $25.02 per share. As of December 31, 2022, NCCV was $2.3 billion, discounted at 6%, an increase of 42% compared to December 31st, 2021. Our December 31st, 2022 NCCP at this discount rate equates to approximately $8,200 per customer and $20.01 per share. Our commitment to service allows us to benefit from low default and delinquency rates. This is not a new or unintentional phenomenon. Rather, it is the foundation of our business model. Currently, we are seeing approximately 25 basis points in value loss from net defaults, while the market assumes this loss rate to be closer to 120 basis points. This disconnect between reality and market assumptions directly benefits us as we have elected to retain the underlying contracted cash flows, meaning that the NCCV we actually realize in cash is above the discounted value, especially at higher discount rates. In the 10 plus years Sanova has been in business, our total capital loss for all systems is only $100 million, which represents less than 2% of cumulative capital deployed over those 10 years. This compares quite favorably to the recent KBRA listed average of 1.4% for solar loans, which would have translated to a 14% cumulative capital loss for our peers taken as a whole over the same period. On slide 10, you will see our NCCV per share as of our IPO date and each subsequent year end compared to Sunova's share price as of the same day. While our NCCV per share has approximately doubled since our IPO, with over half of this value creation coming in 2022, our equity has not responded. In fact, even though our business model has created significant operating leverage of long-term contracted cash flows, Shares of Sanova recently have been trading and continue to trade well below our NCCV per share. This means our equity value is reflecting negative value for growth, our platform, and the customer option value we retain. On slide 11, we have taken a different approach to our valuation by referencing our stock price as a multiple of adjusted EBITDA plus principal and interest from solar loans. Even though our key financial metrics have grown significantly, our valuation clearly has not followed suit. as at the end of 2022, shares of Sanova were trading at a multiple lower than at the end of any of the previous years post-IPO. This is all despite solid execution as a public company, rapid growth, and the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Slides 13 through 15 provide our detailed 2023 guidance and liquidity forecast issued during Sanova's analyst day and our major metric growth plan, the triple-double-triple. Given the strong demand we continue to see for our energy services, accompanied by our robust backlog and the insight we have into our future financial results from retaining our long-term contracted cash flows, we can confidently reaffirm our full-year 2023 guidance as well as our triple-double-triple plan. We expect to capture 10% of our 2023 adjusted EBITDA together with the principal interest we collect from solar loans in the first quarter increasing to 20% in Q2, 30% in Q3, and 40% in Q4. We expect our 2023 customer additions to occur more evenly, with 45% of additions occurring during the first half of the year. I will now turn the call back over to John.
spk14: Thanks, Rob. Consumer energy service demands have quickly evolved over the last few years, and we have seen what used to be a simple solar sale shift in the consumer's mind from that of a product purchase of panels on a roof to a more sophisticated technology-enabled service purchase. We continue to bring new technologies such as batteries, load managers, electric vehicle chargers, quiet generators, and other hardware from various manufacturers together. We are integrating these technologies from various manufacturers in a way that delivers a superior energy service for the stationary and transportation energy needs of homeowners and businesses. We've increasingly seen more home and business owners acknowledge the inherent value of the energy services that Sunova provides, resulting in continued strong demand. Illustrated on slide 17, Sunova's energy as a service business model, which encompasses our adaptive home, business, and community platforms, our large network of dealers, and our access to best-in-class equipment manufacturers, is allowing us to scale at an increasing rate. By supplying consumers with best in market solutions that are supported by our Sanova software platform and up to 25 years of Sanova Protect service, we continue to pick up additional market share from single product and service constrained companies and expand our total addressable market. On slide 18, you will see Sanova's U.S. residential market coverage. We currently offer services in 54 U.S. states and territories. Sunova has an extensive and growing footprint, and we are confident in our ability to reach comprehensive national coverage by 2024 with the broadest energy as a service portfolio in the industry. We believe that energy technologies should be integrated together through software and prompt service response to deliver a more reliable power service at a better price. Sunova offers solutions that complement the energy sale and create additional pathways to value creation, allowing us to deepen our service relationships over time while increasing our share of wallet and overall NCCB per customer. This extends to our Sanova Protect and Repair services and aggregation sales and is supported by our open approach to all forms of contractors and financing. The Sanova portfolio is comprehensive and growing, and you should expect to see additional innovation from us in the months ahead. Turning to slide 19, Sunova's commercial business continues to see significant market expansion and project pipeline growth, including demand for microgrids, electric vehicle charging, and resiliency solutions. Escalating utility rates have further increased demand for Sunova's adaptive business offerings as business owners increasingly seek greater savings on operating expenses in a high interest rate environment. We will continue to expand Sunova's business markets to mirror our residential markets coverage. Indeed, Sunova continues to execute across the board on our energy as a service business model. We continue to take market share and increase our total addressable market. Thus, we are confident in our ability to meet or exceed our 2023 guidance targets. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.
spk07: Of course. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question today, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your headset is fully plugged in and unmuted locally. That's star one to ask a question. And our first question today comes from Philip Shen from Roth Capital. Philip, please go ahead. Your line is open.
spk13: Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. John, you said originations were up 125% year-over-year in January. and you highlighted that this trend continues. You also maintained your 23 customer growth guide. How much upside do you think there could be to that 35% year-over-year growth? Where are you seeing that strength, which states and any states with weakness? And then ultimately, you know, with the lease loan mix and the originations, you know, what are you seeing there, and do you expect that mix to shift in 23? Where do you think this ends up going? in Q4 of this year. Thanks.
spk14: Hey, Phil. This is John. Lots of questions there, so let's see if I catch them all. First, yes, the growth is extremely strong. There's no doubt about that. What I would say is that we did have, I would say, a vigorous debate about raising guidance on growth and decided to wait for at least the next quarter. The Q1 call gives us another 60 days or so. If this does continue, then we'll readdress guidance at that point in time. But the growth is very, very heavy. In terms of where are we seeing it, I would say it's fair to say the northeast mid-Atlantic is on fire in the sense of demand. It's been very, very heavy, and it's not a recent phenomenon. It's been over the last four to five months. But we're also seeing some pretty good growth in Florida and Texas, and across the mid part, mid-continent of the country as well. We've never had a big presence in California. And frankly, that's not been a place where we picked up any incremental other than in terms of the overall growth rate of the company is obviously very high. So we continue to grow share out there. And we do expect to pick more up, especially after NIM 3.0 is put in place, just given our energy as a service model versus a product sale industry that's dominated out there. In terms of lease and loan, we've definitely seen on our solar, if you will, transactions that don't include some of the other pieces of the energy as a service model. We have generators, batteries, and many load management, EV chargers, etc., We have seen a decided shift to a lease, I would say, in that kind of core part of the business with solar, a 60-40 split. So we feel like that will move 65-75 lease PPA to loan. However, I want to strongly caution that the other parts of our business that make up an energy service to the customer are typically dominated by loans. It can be, for instance, batteries and generators. and other services in products, load management, EV charging, et cetera. And we're seeing explosive growth in those areas as a lot of customers don't have those technologies. They're buying EVs, for instance. And so we do want to caution that we think that there's still good growth in the loan side of the business as well. But overall, it's impressive growth. I think it's very clear. why we're experiencing the growth. The business has changed. The industry has changed. And the MIM 3.0 is actually a benefit to the service providers. I think everybody's heard that now. I think our voice will be the loudest as we're the most focused and the biggest as an energy service company. And when you look at the sale of a service, it's a lot more complex. It's not a product sale. And that's something that goes to exactly what we are. And there is a lot of equipment out there. I think it's fair to say we're swimming in equipment as an industry at this point in time. And as you pointed out, and I ratified it, as others have, the loan to lease. And there's not many lease PPA providers out there to have the capability and balance sheet and financing capability to execute on that. So we're in a very good spot, a really good spot. And as I said in my opening remarks, we've never been in a stronger position.
spk13: Great. Thanks, John. Great color there. My follow-up here is on new dealers. We've been tracking the need and want of dealers to shift over to a lease platform over the past few months. Can you talk about your ability to onboard these new dealers in 23? How many more could you add? Or have your imbalance from these new dealers accelerated in the past few months? What are your approval rates for these dealers? could they be a source of upside to 2023 that people may not be thinking about? How much more upside could there be to customer additions from these dealers? Thanks.
spk14: Yes, there's no question that we're seeing a huge influx of dealers. I would also say there's other industries such as, I guess a broad description would be home automation with load management. They have a lot of contractors that want to come in and provide the entire energy as a service model. Generator contractors, obviously, they've got freed up capacity here over the last few months, and they're very interested in selling the entire bundle in service that SNOVA provides. So there's a lot more sourcing of different types of labor out there, and we're plugging, and we've built a software platform and continue to do so I would say that software is really a weapon and it's something that you'll be increasingly focused on the service providers is what is your software capabilities, how can you include and incorporate all the different types of contractors that exist out there because there's many, many different models and they all have their niches and work in their own way. And we're seeing, I'll give you a specific example, we had our dealer summit and the As a founder, I've got to tell you, I was blown away. This was about four weeks or so ago, but just the sheer attendance. It was over 4x what we had last year. I think there was a lot of good news that you and maybe others picked up on that. Everybody was quite impressed with what we have. We have a lot of work to do, but we're seeing a lot of interest in what we have to provide. I think there's tremendous upside in the dealer growth number, and that will continue to provide an additional lift on our growth.
spk13: Great. Thanks, John. I'll pass it on.
spk07: Thank you. The next question comes from Julian DeMilleen-Smith from Bank of America. Julian, please go ahead. Your line is open.
spk05: Hey, guys. Thank you so much. Appreciate the time and the opportunity to connect. Nicely done again. Just first off, service-customer mix, can you guys talk a little bit about how you're expecting that to trend through the course this year? Can you talk a little bit about what the economics of those customers, i.e., what are the various sources of these service customers, if you will? Just a little bit of the backdrop there. And then all together also, a little bit of the mix of your customer origination regionally as well, if you can comment, given your growth expectations.
spk14: Hey, Julian, this is John. Yeah, we're not going to break out the different types of services we offer. The contract is more than we've done, which I think is a lot, maybe too much in the back of the appendix in our slides. What I would say is that we continue to see explosive growth in the service-only business. There is an aging fleet out there. There's some equipment that needs to be replaced. I think that's something that's not discussed a lot, that there's And it doesn't mean it's bad equipment. It just means that there's failure rates out there, and nobody's focused on it. The entire industry has been built on the new customer. I mean, the entire industry, the equipment, all of the other competitors we have, the loan-only providers, the contractors, everybody. And we're seeing a huge demand for customers as those power rates go up from utilities to have their system online 8,760 hours in a year. It's really not difficult. The power rate is a lot higher in the monopoly, and it keeps getting higher, so customers want that service on from Sanova or their other providers, their other product providers, if you will, and so they call us to get it repaired. In terms of the profitability, we are targeting that 50% gross margin to adjusted EBITDA per transaction. I wouldn't say we get all of it there, but that is where we're targeting. We do get quite a bit there. So they're pretty profitable customers, and we still see a tremendous amount of demand and growth, and we'll continue to build out our software capability and our logistics capability both in supply chain and the actual technicians that go out there and get things fixed for customers, get them back online where they can have a better energy service at a better price.
spk05: Got it. But you don't have a specific expectation on, hey, you know, out of the 120 for this year, you know, we're going to do X amount of service arrangements versus, you know, more traditional type of customer contracts at this point. You don't want to set that expectation. Maybe the other one is a related one would be gain on sale type composition within your 23 guide, what you would share at this point on expectations.
spk14: Yeah, I'll turn that over to Rob.
spk12: Yeah, as you know, we had ROCF positive back in 2021, which meant that the cash flow from the operating assets was more than covering the debt service and operating costs at that point. So, you know, at the past two years, we've been using gain on sale and accelerated payments to complement our recurring cash flows. You've seen this in our inventory sales. You've seen this in we have some of the new homes customers who opt to go straight into a purchase of a system. So if we look ahead to 23 and we're looking at the customer cash flows from the cash and direct sales, inventory sales, direct service, new home sales, forward flow activities, loan prepayments as well, I'd probably put that in there, and ITC transferability that's allowed under IRAs, We're looking at that to be about 24%, give or take, of our customer cash inflows compared to about 17% is what we had in 2022. So there is a bit of a pickup there as a total percentage, but it's really just continuing a trend that we had already started in 21 and accelerated back into 22.
spk15: Got it. Sorry, guys, for that. Thank you. Thanks, Julian.
spk07: The next question is from Brian Lee from Goldman Sachs. Brian, your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk01: Hey, guys. Good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. I guess on the guidance here, appreciate some of the seasonality and the cadence. But I had a question. Just if you look historically, you had more like 30% of EBITDA and P&I showing up in 4Q of each year. You're guiding the much more seasonal, the higher 40% for 2023. Kind of walk us through that, maybe the puts and takes. And, you know, does that create more risk versus prior years given the higher back-end weighting? Just wondering how you have the visibility here into the later half of the year, especially 4Q given the high weighting there. And then I had a follow-up.
spk14: Yeah, Brian, this is John. I'll answer the part of the question and turn it over to Rob to answer the remaining part. I want to first point out that the additions, customer additions, are more evenly weighted this year, and that's directly attributable to that we've got either in-service customers at this point, which are well ahead of the quarter plan so far, and I expect that trend to continue, or in the backlog, well over 50% of the customers that we expect in our guidance at our midpoint already for this year. So I think that that front-end loading of the customers that we expect for a guidance plan is part of the answer of this, is that those cash flows will eventually catch up in the back half, but there's some other moving pieces as well, or pieces, and I'll let Rob address those.
spk12: Yeah, I mean, there's some stuff that we're front-loading a little bit of some of our investments and some of the stuff that we're working on for the full year into the first quarter. Traditionally, we sort of spread those out a little bit more, but we felt it was important to try to get some stuff done in the first quarter that we're going to have to expense just from an operating, it just falls down to the operating expense. The second one is that some of the gain on sale pieces that we've already got in place are going to actually occur in the second half of the year, and so that's got a little bit of that skew. Generally speaking, I would say that a lot of what we've seen is an increase also in the pace of our prepayments. Those have been accelerating, and so we actually did some of that late last year. But as we've seen that start to accelerate and as we have been continuing to originate higher interest rate loans, the shaping of those CPR curves the prepayment rates on those curves shift some of it into the second half of the year as well. So it's a combination of a lot of different things.
spk01: I appreciate that, Kyle. That's super helpful. And then maybe just to stay on the guidance topic for a moment, and again, kind of a math-related question, if you Look at the 45-55 split you're talking about. I think it's by design what you're alluding to in terms of the customer additions. But when you look at the year-on-year comps, it means you're doing about 65% growth in the first half, 20% growth in the second half. And then if my math is right, you know, just given how strong your 4Q that just reported for end of 22, it seems like on a year-on-year basis you may not even be growing in 4Q on customer additions exiting this year if all this math is correct. And so maybe what am I missing there? It seems like a lot of your backlog is getting drawn down here in the first half. You're going to have a fairly modest growth rate exiting the year. Just any early thoughts on 24, I guess, given that cadence you're sort of implying based on the guidance? Thanks, guys.
spk14: Yeah, I would say, Brian, it goes back to Phil's question, is maybe light in terms of when you look at the plan. And I think it's conservative. And I would tell you that there is no way that we don't grow in Q4 year over year.
spk01: All right, fair enough. I'll take it offline. Thanks, guys.
spk07: The next question is from Mark Strauss from J.P. Morgan. Mark, please go ahead. Your line is open.
spk16: Yeah, good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. Rob, I wanted to go back to your comments about the spreads. You're saying that you think today that they could be over 500 basis points, getting to 600 basis points or approaching 600 basis points maybe over the coming months. Just what provides the confidence in putting that statement out there and how much of that is driven by the unlevered returns increasing versus the cost of capital decreasing?
spk12: Yeah, I mean, the first couple of prints that we saw this year in the capital markets were decidedly better than what we had seen at the end of last year. So part of that is a tightening of the spreads, even with the slight increase in the base rates. But most of it's really the targeted fully burdened unlevered return. There's just so much headroom that the utilities are providing us. We've been able to take advantage of some of that with the dealers. Part of it also is a combination of the product suite. As we're adding more and more services, we're able to generally get higher margins based on a broader service offering that we're providing to the customer. So that's also helping increase the fully burdened unlevered return. And as we look at the fully burdened unlevered return, one of the things that's sort of endemic in it is that you spread across that burden across the capital deployment base. The larger the amount of capital that you're actually deploying over a period, generally speaking, the less burdensome that full burden is becoming. And just given the high rate of acceleration that we're still finding in our sales and in the types of sales that we're making, that continues to go up. One thing that sort of gets buried a little bit in the customer count is all the up sales that we're getting from customers. And the up sales are some of our most profitable sales, but we're not counting that customer again. So when we go and say, hey, here's a customer, they were maybe a generator customer, now they're becoming a solar customer, we're not having to reacquire that customer, which is really the most expensive part of the actual, of the sort of denominator, if you will, of the fully burdened unlevered returns. So a lot of what we're seeing with continuing to build on and add on customers has been adding to that fully burdened on levered return as we go along. And I would say sort of the last thing is that even though we're here in the first quarter and when we look at sort of the seasonality of our fully burdened on levered return, we're still seeing that fully burdened on levered return entering the year really about sort of the same strength levels without seeing We've seen some of the things that add on to that fully burdened on-liver return. Some of the market segments that tend to be a little bit more seasonal haven't even started kicking in yet really in earnest, but they're starting to pick up. So we have a lot of faith in that fully burdened on-liver return continuing to push up and to grow and certainly we expect that to be, you know, we'd love to see that get into its awkward adolescence and teenage years if we possibly could. but we're seeing really a lot of strength in the fully bundled member return, and that more so than the stabilization of the capital markets is where we're seeing that opportunity for the spread.
spk14: Just to highlight, we have done price increases already in the last few weeks. We will do more in the coming days, and more after that is what I anticipate. So we're continuing to see and exercising pricing power.
spk16: Got it. Okay. Thank you both. Just a real quick modeling question, Rob. The inventory sales numbers ticked up this quarter. How should we think about that? What's embedded in your guidance for 23?
spk12: You know, the inventory sales number, I think, for the fourth quarter is pretty endemic of what we were expecting, more or less, for the year, pretty much at that pace. The inventory sales tend to be a little bit more seasonal as well, mostly because... A lot of it follows the installations in our more battery-rich areas. If you can see the battery penetration rate as that continues to grow and the acceleration of the battery penetration rate, that's going to reflect the sales of that equipment because the dealers want it in a just-in-time basis. They're not looking to hold a whole bunch of inventory. I think that's the way to sort of think about the shaping, but the magnitude of the fourth quarter is pretty representative, I would say, of where we expect to be on a full-year basis. And it's not, as you know, it's a profitable piece of our business. It's not really where we're seeing the margin being driven necessarily as much as we are in other areas. It's just a nice little compliment to the gain on sale.
spk16: Yeah, okay. Thank you very much.
spk07: Thanks, Rob. The next question comes from Corinne Blanchard from Deutsche Bank. Corinne, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
spk09: Hey, good morning, everyone. Just maybe if you can comment or provide any more color on the battery attachment rate and where you see it coming maybe over the next two quarters.
spk14: Yeah, Corinne, this is John. There's seasonality in some of our markets, typically on the islands. Puerto Rico is included in that. We do see quite a bit of seasonality with the holiday vacation schedule, shall we say, and that definitely does provide as that market continues to grow. As everybody knows, we've been in Puerto Rico now for 10 years and really we're the first and by far the largest player and service provider on the island. We have a deep commitment to that island and that community. And that does provide some seasonality in the storage attachment rate. I do think the NEM 3.0 in California will start to pick up a battery attachment rate quite significantly here later this year. And candidly, I think that the price declines that we see that will happen in the ESS products will certainly help incent demand. Before you ask it, I do see that Any equipment, and this is certainly our assumption, if it doesn't happen, then that's upside. But we're assuming that all the equipment price declines that we're seeing and expect to see across the board will inure to the benefit of our dealers. So that, I think, whether they choose to pass some of that along to the customers, I would suspect so. But that will incent more storage demand as well.
spk09: Great, thank you. And my other question would be, did you include any of the IRI or the ITC adder into your guidance, or is it still something that you're waiting to get more clarity from the department or the IRI?
spk12: Yeah, we're actually waiting to get more clarity. I would say, especially when it comes to the LMI adders, we really We're really not expecting any of that to come in into 2023. We're looking at that as much more of a 2024 phenomenon based on the recent guidance that was put out, which we felt was unfortunately not very friendly to consumers. But I guess consumers, LMI consumers, will just have to wait another year. We do have a little bit on the domestic content that's in there, but most of it's really just based on the 30% ITC. So obviously there is upside, and as we get more guidance coming, we'll plan for that upside. It goes back a little bit even more to Mark's question. I think that we could, you know, if we get more guidance, we could certainly see even more uplift in our expectations for the fully burdened on lever returns.
spk09: Great. Thank you.
spk07: The next question comes from Mahib Mandeloy from Credit Suisse. Mahib, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
spk11: Hey, good morning. Thanks for the questions. Just a question on the unlevered IRRs over here. You're an impressive 11th person this quarter, but how should we think about the cadence through the rest of the year for 23? Especially it looks like the guidance Q1 is sequential, not just Q4, so should we expect a reduction there and eventually getting back to that 600 basis point you talked about?
spk14: Yeah, Mahit, this is John. I would say that we continue to see strength here. And Rob referenced to it, some of our markets that are a little more seasonal that we're just now starting to see impact are a little more profitable. And we expect that that will start to continue or put some upwards pressure on the unlevered return here over the next few weeks. How much of that falls into Q1 versus Q2 and beyond, don't know yet. The price increases that we have done this quarter late last year and will do this quarter will definitely have a material impact on the unlevered returns. So I would say that we'll continue to see movement upwards. I don't have a lot of visibility as far as right now as about how much upwards, but we do expect to see that the unlevered returns would continue to move upwards from that 11%.
spk11: Great, thanks. And sorry if I missed this, but did you talk about your service-only customer mix for the full year embedded in the guidance?
spk14: Yeah, we did. It was a previous question, and it was Julian's question. We're not going to break that out. I think we've got enough data back there. Too much, I think most people and investors think. But what I will tell you is, you know, regardless of the type of customer or what We sell to that customer, whether it's an upsell, whether it's a solar, solar plus storage generator, battery only, you name it. We're an energy as a service provider. And the metric that I look at and make sure that we're keeping ourselves honest as far as value creation is NCCV per share. And NCCV per customer is another metric that's obviously very much related to that. And as long as the NCCB per share is going up at whatever discount rate you pick, we're creating value and we're creating a large amount of value. And I would, I think it would be a good exercise for analysts and investors to go take a look at the contracted cash at whatever discount rate they want to use divided by the number of shares out there. It'd be an interesting, insightful comparison amongst us and some of our peers. you'll find that we dominate on the contracted cash on a per share basis and per customer basis. And so that's including all types of customers, all types, and we don't duplicate the customer once, as Rob just mentioned, once we sell your unique customer. As we continue to upsell, we do not count those as additional customers because that is obviously a single customer. So NCCB per share, focus on that. That's the value creation. And then, you know, adjusted EBITDA plus P&I gives you a a very good sense and investor sense of the operating leverage we're creating.
spk11: Got it. I appreciate that. And we'll take the rest offline. Thanks. Thanks.
spk07: The next question comes from Ben Carlo from Baird. Ben, your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk00: Hey, thanks guys for taking my questions. Good morning. So, um, in the liquidity forecast for 23, you have debt proceeds of tax equity, 900 million. And I just wonder, you know, as you move to lease PPA, maybe Rob, how, you know, how much progress you guys have made on that, that number. And if there's any constraints there that have a follow up.
spk12: Yeah, we closed five tax equity funds in, in the fourth quarter. So, you know, we feel pretty good. We're, working on two expansions of existing funds right now. We have a number of term sheets in front of us. We have a number of other discussions for additional tax equity. We have folks who do perpetual funds that we've already got lined up. One thing that's been interesting has been on the transferability that there continues to be a lot of new folks who want to express some interest in coming in and doing some stuff on the transferability side. What's been very heartening to me is that there are a number of folks who do have significant tax capacity out there who have been very happy with us and, you know, maybe a tow dip fund of maybe 50 million in a prior year who want to come back and do much larger funds this year. We've tried to make sure that we have a diverse amount of capital providers in there coming into our funds. That's really inured to our benefit. My accounting folks, really, they don't love having to do a bunch of different HLBV accounting, but that's the price that you pay, and my hat's always off to those guys. We feel very good about that position, about the tax equity availability, and probably I would say we've probably never been in a stronger position as far as tax equity availability. I think that in an environment like the one that we're in right now with the IRA and with the expansion, you've really – increase interest in folks who might otherwise not have entered the market. But at the same time, they want to go with established players in the space. And there's really only a few of us that they can really get that comfort around that have all the engineering, that have the controls in place, that have the reporting capabilities, so that folks feel very comfortable that what they're getting is a legitimate tax credit that they can monetize and won't have to worry about recapture.
spk00: Thank you. In the weeds here, but the customer acquisition costs ticked up in the core. Could you just talk through that?
spk12: Yeah, I mean, that's one of the many legacy metrics that are out there, pardon me, in part because you really just used to have one or two markets and everybody was a PV-only customer and Now, back then, that was probably a pretty good market. As we are adding more and more services per customer, and we are doing more where we're doing the upsells to existing customers, but not really adding on another customer into the denominator, you're going to continue to see that tick up. So if we're just talking about someone putting 6KW panels up on their roof, in a cookie-cutter fashion, that's certainly going to help the number come down. That's not our typical customer. We're seeing bigger systems. We're seeing batteries. We're seeing as we add more and more services, as John mentioned, EV chargers, main panel upgrades that folks actually need to get in a lot of cases when they add on solar and storage, folks who want to add a generator for belt and suspenders, whatever it is, we're just seeing the average ticket price go up. And then that's actually driving, as you know, back to the earlier comments, I was talking about fully burdened on levered return, that as you have more committed capital, you're spreading across that sort of same cost base, that helps to push up the fully burdened on levered return as well. So we would expect to see that actually continue to rise. And I would call it an antiquated metric, but I would say it's actually indicating something different this time around, which is the health of the industry and really the health and the benefit of having multiple services that we can provide to a single customer.
spk00: Got it. Last one, John, on page 19, the go-to market. It says selectively pursuing large opportunities. Could you just walk us through that, what you're thinking about there? I know you guys have done a lot on partnerships and such, and then even acquisition or two, but what that means there. Thank you.
spk14: This is addressing the business markets division that we have in that we've seen a lot, a tremendous amount of traction there. We've closed on some customers and we have a very healthy and growing pipeline. The returns are quite nice. And when we look at as far as the other partnerships and ways to go to market, there's a number of partnerships that we have in the works right now. I think you saw the recent USAA announcement from us. Expect more of these types of announcements. And I guess I'm going to I assume that buried into that question is something about international. Yes, we are going to go international. We're going to do this in a methodical fashion, but we will fulfill our name as Sunova Energy International. We will do it. Thank you.
spk07: The next question comes from Amit Thakkar from BMO Capital Markets. Amit, your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk02: Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Rob, I was just wondering, the $2.4 billion of non-recourse debt borrowings for the year, should we kind of assume sort of the same proportion of securitizations in the ABS market that you did in 2022 as part of the $1.7 billion that you got done?
spk12: Yeah, that's the right way to think about it.
spk02: Okay. And then just back to the guidance on the customer account growth, I was just wondering if you could kind of give us a little bit of sense on the proportion of that growth that's kind of on a same-store basis from your existing dealer network versus an expansion of the dealer network.
spk14: Yeah, that's not something we're going to break out. This is John, by the way. But I'd say that our existing dealers continue to grow at a pace that surprises me. But I would say that a good chunk are new dealers. Now, some of these dealers, in most cases, they take a while to really ramp up. So a lot of these that we already had and we're ramping them up maybe as far back as Q2 of last year are really starting to hit stride over Q1, obviously, of this year. So if I gave you a number, it'd just be a guess. I'm not going to do that. We only give numbers out that we're certain about. So I'm not answering your question, but I would say that definitely we're still seeing a lot of surprising growth out of our existing dealers. One thing I will add to try to give you something is that we are continuing to sign up exclusivity agreements at a blistering pace. That is something that a lot more of our partners want, and they want that certainty. They want the broadest product portfolio in the entire industry by far, and the biggest geographic footprint in the industry by far. And they can also now get access into the business markets if they want to do that, and they can't get that anywhere else as well. So we've got a lot to offer. The software continues to be something that is becoming more and more powerful. And whether it's a loan lease or a PPA or all the other products we have, we have it for you. So we invite you to come over. If you're a great contractor, treat customers fairly and do great service. We want to be partnered with you. Thank you.
spk07: The next question is from Sean Morgan from Evercore. Sean, your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk15: Hey, thanks, guys. So, I mean, we talked a little bit on Puerto Rico before. I think, John, we kind of talked about how sometimes PREPA, you know, maybe not the most consistent service has been kind of a solar ambassador for you and a real citadel of strength for NOVA. So I'm curious, this public-private partnership with another U.S. public company, Do you think that's going to have any impact on sort of the sales strength you've had historically in Puerto Rico, or do you kind of view this as just going to be a continuation of your strong book of business down there with maybe some minor modifications?
spk14: Yeah, Sean. Yeah, what I would say is that inherent in our service is that we match generation to the load on site. There is no way physically for any centralized power provider to beat that reliability. And so we feel quite comfortable that reliability as a whole and macro trend is going to continue and certainly continue there in Puerto Rico. I think the company you're referring to, I think, is a very well-run company. I think they'll do a great job. We look forward to working with them. and provide better energy service to the island and to the community of Puerto Rico. So any way we can help, we're certainly here to do that. I would also offer up that as recently as over the last few days, there are many other states outside the territory of Puerto Rico, which is obviously a part of the United States, that have power reliability problems that are pretty extreme and of the same sort. And one of those is here in Texas as well. So, you know, I would say that our demand is not for our services, certainly not limited to Puerto Rico or any other island. And we see that demand trend not only continuing for better energy service at a better price, but accelerating.
spk15: Okay. Thanks, John. And this one probably may be best suited to Rob, but it's sort of an accounting matching question on the ITC. And I know we're still waiting for Treasury guidance on some of this, but When you start recognizing systems with the ITC attached, is that because if there's a tax sort of implication to it, do you book it in the following tax year? Or will you be booking ITC credits sort of in real time as you're recognizing revenue on systems?
spk12: So we've always booked it, pardon me, in real time. Remember, we're consolidating onto our books as well. and then we're deconsolidating the partnership side of it through NCI. So if somebody's receiving the tax credit in that tax year, it gets sort of taken in and then taken back out through NCI. But it's always recognized in the year in which the asset is placed into service. Now, we also have historical times where in the past, We had not been using tax equity back several years ago. We built up significant ITC credits that we still have as a company, and those are actually good for the next several years. But the credit gets recognized in the year in which the system is placed into service.
spk03: Okay, thanks, Will.
spk12: Same as it would be for the homeowner, by the way, in a loan. The year that their system is placed in the service is the year that they get their tax credit.
spk15: And the cash, I guess, would be recognized when? I mean, from the homeowner's perspective, they file their taxes, right?
spk12: Correct. But for us, it depends on the tax equity fund. So some tax equity funds allow us to fund at different stages, right? along the way, and then their IRRs may get calculated based on that when that gets put in, when we actually bring the cash in. Oftentimes the cash, and I'm getting really wonky here, so my apologies to everybody on the call, but some of that cash goes into restricted cash where it gets held until it reaches the next stage, so they have to fund at a certain point. Anyone who's investing in a tax equity fund and wants the tax credit has to be an investor in at a certain percentage prior to the date that the asset itself goes into service. So they can't just say, they can't just be an IOU. They actually have to put cash up. Oftentimes that gets put into restricted cash and then ends up getting released when the asset is placed into service. So if you look at the different types of flip structures that we have, I would say generally speaking, you will find that The yield flip structures are more willing to fund earlier and some of the calendar flip structures will tend to, some of them will fund earlier, some of them will fund only a percentage, like say 20% prior to the asset going into service and the rest immediately upon the asset going into service.
spk15: Okay, thanks. That's really helpful.
spk07: The next question comes from Pavel Molchanov from Raymond James. Pavel, your line is open. Please go ahead.
spk04: Thanks for taking the question. John, you mentioned, and I'm quoting, we are swimming in components and hardware. That's quite a big change versus a year ago. What do you attribute that to?
spk14: Every market has a cycle. And, you know, there's equipment cycles. We've dealt with that in the industry. I think a lot of investors and others have not experienced, you know, an equipment cycle. And it's pretty normal, just like an interest rate cycle where a lot of us, you know, that have been alive never experienced interest rates going up as much as they have, right? So I think it's just normal. And, you know, there'll be, you know, over time, winners and losers in the equipment side. But, The number of manufacturers of high-quality gear is tremendously increased. We greatly value our partners, and I'll leave it to them to make commentary as far as if they're individually taking market share or not. But, look, do some just rudimentary calling around. I think some of this is a big part of the fear of demand in the industry. Every contractor has a chock full of warehouse of equipment of equipment of all type. We do have, you know, our warehouses, all the equipment is sold, by the way, but we have it as well. We're seeing it in distributors, and it's across the board, and more is coming, right, with the IRA incentives you have to produce here in the United States, no matter what the supply-demand picture is for that, you know, whether it's a panel, inverter, or ESS. So it's just to state the facts, nothing but the facts, is there's a lot of equipment out there, and more is coming. And I think that's obviously very good for consumers, very good for demand for us and our service peers, and is a big reason why I think people, you know, a lot of investors, some analysts, flat missed it as far as, you know, if you look at the demand that the service providers like us and our two peers are saying that they're seeing out there, that's a big reason for the miss. You're looking at the wrong data point.
spk04: Let me follow up on the commercial market. Historically, you've given guidance as customer additions. And if some of these new commercial customers are 10, 50, 100 times what a residential system would be in scale, how is that going to change the way you guide?
spk14: Right now, it's not going to change. We don't anticipate a change. And we continue to see that our residential business, particularly with our models, energy as a service, with all the different services and products that we can offer, is going to continue to be a very large portion of our business and certainly is in our guidance. So right now, it's not a material change. You know, if that changes over the next couple of years or so, we'll revisit that. But right now, we don't see it changing the way that we guide.
spk04: Great. Thanks very much.
spk14: Thank you.
spk07: The next question is from Abhi Sinha from Northland Capital. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.
spk10: Yeah, hi. Thanks for squeezing me in. Just one quick – you talked about the tax equity, you know, funding issue. I'm curious how big of a project like in megawatts could be funded by tax equity availability that you have right now?
spk12: What we have right now will probably fund most of what we have during the year. And what we have for term sheets and everything else will fund at least the rest and into 2024. Because it's about the same position we were in last year.
spk10: Okay. And quickly, any comment on the G&A progression? How do you see that 2020-2024 as we progress into a couple of years?
spk12: I'm sorry, the G&A progression? Yes, sir. So like the OPEX? We're going to expect to see that on a per-customer basis. Have a little bit of fluctuation. If you go back to the first, I think it was under Brian's question, he was asking about the shaping and why did we expect to have a little bit more adjusted EBITDA in the latter half of the year and a little bit less in the first half of the year. And I said part of it was some stuff that we're going to be doing that has to be expensed in the first quarter. But generally speaking, as we go on to later into the year, we'd expect the GNA to come down relative to the size of the adjusted EBITDA. together with the P&I. But we are a rapidly growing company. We are investing in service offerings. And that takes people, that takes equipment. And while we expect to continue to create operating leverage, and we expect to continue to create customer Sorry, customer value. We will expect that we will have an increase of GNA, but not an acceleration of GNA. It will continue to decelerate.
spk10: Got it. Sure. Thank you. That's all I have.
spk07: The next question is from Brian Levine from Citi. Brian, your line is now open. Please go ahead.
spk03: Thank you for taking my question. And follow up on Puerto Rico. Appreciate the call on the proper agreement. But can you speak to if the company is pursuing any of the billion dollar Puerto Rico energy resilience relief package from the DOE or how that could impact the outlook for the company?
spk14: I would think that anything of that sort, given our strong position in market share and just part of the community for that number of years, over 10 years, is something that we would certainly be involved in. I don't think it's appropriate for us to comment on any sort of transactions or potential transactions or discussions that we may or may not be in.
spk03: Okay. Appreciate the color. And then just lastly, in terms of kind of distributed generation connection issues that are just in terms of hookups for electricity for end retail customers. Are you seeing any impacts or delays from the utilities? And is that impacting your outlook in any of your jurisdictions or any of your locations for growth for your resources?
spk14: Yeah, that's a great question. Certainly, we would have grown even more last year had it not been for anti-competitive behavior and anti-consumer behavior by a number of these utilities. We are addressing them with the respective public utility commission as we find more and more of this type of behavior. I would think at some point in time, maybe the federal government would be interested in the anti-competitive and anti-consumer behavior that these companies are showing and doing. And so, you know, we've seen a pickup in some of these areas as those public utility commissioners have done a great job of intervening on behalf of consumers and changing that behavior. But it's going to be an ongoing war. I mean, just to make them do the right thing is something we spend a lot of time on, and I'm proud to say our government affairs team is the best in the industry and is doing a really good job of highlighting this for the commissioners across the country. And, you know, we'll get it done. We'll figure it out how to get the utilities to be consumer-friendly. But it is an effort each and every day.
spk08: Appreciate the cover. Thank you.
spk07: We have no further questions at this time, so I'll hand the call back to John Berger for concluding remarks.
spk14: The industry has changed. Consumers buy a better energy service at a better price, not a product. We have and we will continue to expand our addressable market and take market share. Thank you for joining us.
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