Emeren Group Ltd

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the fourth quarter and full year 2021 Renizzola Power Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded, and if you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Gary Dvorak. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Victor, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call to discuss our fourth quarter 2021 results. We released our shareholder letter after the market closed today. It's available on the website. There is also a supplemental slide deck posted on the website that we'll reference during our prepared remarks. On the call with me today are Mr. Yumin Liu, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Kuch, and Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. John Yuen, CEO of North America. Before we continue, note on slide two that this presentation will have remarks that are made that may include predictions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking. These forward-looking statements represent Renasola Power's current judgment for the future. However, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Those risks are described under the risk factors and elsewhere in Renasola Power's filings with the SEC. Please do not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect Rena Sola Power's opinions only as of the date of this call. Rena Sola Power is not obliged to update you on any revisions to these forward-looking statements. Also, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during the conference call are in U.S. dollars. With that, let me now turn the call over to Mr. Yimeng Liu, our CEO. Yimeng?

Thank you, Gary, and thank everyone for joining the call. Before we dive into our fourth quarter results, I'd like to remind everyone that we examine the quarter in detail in our shareholder letter posted on our website. So I'm just going to call out the highlights that you should study in the letter and supplemental deck. The first key point is that for the full year, we return our business to growth with revenue up 8% year over year to 79.7 million and gap net income per ADS up 77% to $0.10 per ADS from $0.06 per ADS in 2020. For Q4, we grow revenue 47% sequentially to $22.8 million, which was just slightly below the midpoint of our guidance range as a result of a product sale delay, which is now scheduled to close in the first half of 2022. In 2021, we more than doubled our project development pipeline from 1 gigawatt at the end of last year to 2.2 gigawatts by the end of 2021, above our original growth target of 2 gigawatts set in the beginning of the year. I'm extremely proud of this strong project pipeline that we have built, which over 60% is located in Europe our largest market where there are tremendous opportunities in the renewable energy projects. In 2021, over 60% of our revenue and 50% of gross profit came from our European operations. As we look forward, we believe the solar industry will experience unprecedented growth as the crisis in the Ukraine has awakened a worldwide desire. and sense of urgency to achieve energy independence. We are already seeing signs of this acceleration in Europe. As an example, on February 28, Germany announced its decision to rapidly accelerate the expansion of the wind and solar power with the goal to generate almost all of the country's electricity from renewable sources by 2035. Across Europe, Many countries are announcing plans similar to Germany's. The USA, our second largest market, is also expected to grow rapidly in the coming years, both utility-scale projects and community solar programs. As an example, recently the US Department of Energy announced plans to enable enough community solar projects to power 5 million homes by 2025. This initiative would increase current capacity by an additional 700%. With the significant strong demand for solar industry, we believe we are well positioned to capitalize on the tremendous opportunities in front of us, given our deep expertise in developing and operating solar projects, extensive network of industry partnerships, well-capitalized balance sheet and unmatched track record in closing financing transactions. In 2022, we expect to build our strong pipeline growth momentum and close the year at three gigawatts with a significant portion of the growth coming from Europe. Longer term, we are targeting five gigawatts of mid to late stage pipeline by end of 2024. With that, I now turn the call over to Renie Solar Power CFO, Ke Chen. Ke?

Thank you, Yu-Ming, and thanks again, everyone, for joining us on the call today. Our shareholder letter and supplemental slides contain all the figures and comparison you need. I'm not going to repeat every number. I'm going to focus on the factors that influenced the results. As I speak, please keep in mind that we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. We use non-GAAP measures because we believe they provide useful information about our operating performance that should be considered by investors along with the GAAP measures. The non-GAAP to GAAP reconciliation is included in our shareholder letter. Let's begin. with our Q4 financial highlights on slide 17. Revenue was $22.8 million, slightly below our guidance middle point of $24 million, due to a delayed project sale, which is now scheduled to close in the first half of 2022. As a reminder, project sales are large with unpredictable timing, and the quarterly revenue will often fluctuate significantly. As such, we measure our success by focusing on profit and pipeline growth. This rate of revenue was $22.8 million, slightly below our meter point of $24 million due to delayed projects. As such, we measure our success by focusing on profit and pipeline growth. This result was still very strong, however, as it represents 47% sequential and 39% year-over-year growth. Project development revenue consists of sales of solar projects in Poland, Spain, Hungary, and the U.S. IPP energy revenue came from 34 million kilowatt-hours generated by our rooftop DG project in China and the U.S. Our gap gross margin for the quarter was 31.7%, which is below the guidance range that we provided, also primarily as a result of this project delay. Year-over-year, however, gross margin improved significantly from 12% in Q4 2020, was driven by our focus on high-margin NTP sales, supported by high-margin IPP electricity sales. Moving on to the operating expense. This quarter, we were impacted by several long cash items. That caused our gap results to be unimpressive. And I will go through them one by one. First, we recorded a 2.3 million accounts receivable write-off related to our legacy manufacturing business as part of our receivable going process. Second, we issued $1.8 million in stock awards to key employees as part of incentive program to support our continued growth. Third, we record a $400,000 impairment for an IPV project in China, a $200,000 write-off for a failed accident at one of our IPV project sites. And lastly, we record a $200,000 project cancellation cost. As such, we record a gap-led loss of $1.6 million in Q4 2021. On a long gap basis, however, our Q4 operating expense was only $4.3 million, and our long gap lead income was $2.5 million, or 11% of our revenue. Our rates for the quarter were even stronger if you look at our adjusted EBITDA or free cash flow, which was $5.3 million and $5.5 million, respectively, for the full year 2021. Revenue increased 8% year-over-year to $79.7 million from $73.5 million in 2020. High-margin project development segment revenue increased 23% year-over-year to $61.1 million and now represents almost 77% of our revenue, up from 67% in 2020. Gap gross margin improved to 39.4% from 22.7% Gap-led income increased to $6.9 million in 2021 from $2.8 million in 2020. Long-gap-led income nearly quadrupled to $14.7 million from $3.7 million. Finally, adjusted EBITDA grew 58% to nearly $26 million. Now let's review the balance shown on slide 20. Our financial position remains strong. and we have the ability to fund any number of initiatives and opportunities. Cash decreased in a quarter as we repurchased $80 million of our own stock and continued to pay down some of our debt. Our debt to asset ratio at the end of Q4 was a regular low of 10.3%. Now let's cover guidance as shown on slide 26. For 2022, We expect our revenue growth to accelerate and for the full year to be in the range of 100 million to 120 million. We anticipate our Q1 revenue will only be between 3 to 4 million as the bulk of our project sales were scheduled to run beginning in Q2. We expect our growth margin for a year to be between 20 to 25%. For net profit, we are targeting between 9 to 10 million for the full year which is in line with our prior guidance of at least 30% growth. Finally, in regard to our share repurchase plan, as of today, we have completed the repurchase of $20 million of ADA shares outstanding, and we still have $30 million remaining. We believe this share repurchase demonstrates the confidence of our board and management team in the strength of our business and the Compiling Goals opportunity in front of us. Thank you, and now we would like to open up the call for any questions that you may have for us. Operator, please go ahead.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, just press the pound key. Once again, that's star one for questions, one more for questions. Our first question will come from Philip Shen from Ross. You may begin.

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. First one on Q4, I think you talked about a $2-plus million non-cash charge from the legacy manufacturing business. Do you expect more of those ahead? And it's been a while since you've been tied to the manufacturing business. And so why is this charge coming up? Just now. Thanks.

Yes, Phil. And actually, we are taking a very prudent approach based on the auditor's guidance. We are still negotiating with them to get this money back. But auditor, again, decided we have to make this charge. We agreed. And we're actively looking for, still looking for, pursue getting some money back. This first thing. Secondly, we don't expect any more significant write-down related to manufacturing anymore going forward.

Okay. Got it. Thank you. You know, you gave your 2022 guidance, and, you know, the margins are a little bit lighter than we would have thought. I know the bottom line increase you're maintaining, you know, 30% year over year. But was wondering, you know, you've been able to deliver nice gross margins in the recent quarters. What is – how are you getting to the steady state of this, you know, 20-plus percent margin as opposed to, you know, what makes it more difficult to kind of get in that 30 to 35 percent? Is it greater competition? Is it – I mean, you guys sell at NTP, so I can't imagine it's supply chain, but maybe it is for your customers. And so just curious if you can give us a little bit more color as to what it might take to drive that margin higher in 2022. Thanks.

So let me answer that first. I will turn to Yiming. Again, overall growth margin guide a little bit lower because we do expect some COD sale in Poland. And COD sale will have a bigger mix this year. And the margin will be lower than the NTP sale. So that's the main reason.

Let me add a couple points, Phil, that the number one are normal NTP project sales. The margin absolutely is expected higher or a lot higher than the current 20 to 25%. The reason, as Ke mentioned, we do have 75 megawatts project under EPC contract will sell to, it's already sold to Optin, but it's under EPC management. As we said, the majority of our sales strategy will be at NPP, but pending on the request from our customers, we do, as we are also capable of doing those EPC and EPC management, including major procurement. So that we interpret that as part of the COD sale. That would increase the revenue part, but that will lower the gross margin.

Okay, thank you for that. And so when you think about the 2022 megawatts that you sell, how many megawatts do you think you are, have you factored into your guidance for sale? And then what's the mix between NTP sale versus bill to sell? Thanks.

The two parts of the question or two parts of the answer I hope to give to you. Number one is that our majority of the sales will still be NTP sales, except some projects in Poland and Hungary will turn to be COD sales as requested by customers. Number two, the In the past many years, we have been doing smaller projects, so the sales were on the smaller deals, including those 1, 2 megawatts up to 5 megawatts at most. But starting in 2022, we will have utility-scale projects in the sales process. And the megawatt-wide will be significantly increased, but the sales will include the big utility scale or middle-sized utility scale projects.

Okay.

Add to that. Yeah, I want to add to that.

Again, in 2021, we sold 128 megawatts. Again, majority of that's NTP cell. And in 2022, we target cell 300 megawatts. As Rumi said, the majority of those still will be NTP sale.

Okay, great. Thank you for that detail. And as you think through the cadence of revenue in Q2, 3, and 4, you gave us Q1. It's clearly a little bit light, but due to timing, can you talk through how the revenues might look as well as margins you know by quarter I know you haven't given official guidance but general you know kind of sense of that trajectory would be great yes okay you will heavily you mean let me answer then you maybe go ahead yeah

Again, yes, it will be heavily towards Q3, Q4 in terms of the revenue mix. So that's a general trend for this year as most of our sales in Europe will towards third quarter and fourth quarter.

Okay, thanks. And then one last one for me. You know, looking through your pipeline, it looked like in Q4 you drove substantial growth in the U.S. pipeline. I was wondering if you could talk through that a bit. And then looking ahead, I think, Yumin, you mentioned that you might end 22 with 3 gigawatts. And so I was wondering if you might be able to share where that growth comes from. Is it primarily the U.S. or because of the war, you see substantial growth in Europe as well. Thanks.

Yeah, thank you. This is a great question. Number one, the second part of the question is we are expecting big or tremendous growth opportunities coming from Europe. The three gigawatts target is what we come up at this time. seeing the opportunities the market has presented to us, especially from the Russian-Ukraine crisis. The current European market, as we see in the seven to eight countries we have activities, all have great demand for solar. And our team are not only committed, but also our team is very, very confident to grow our pipeline in the similar way as we do in last year. The three gigawatts pipeline, I expect the majority of the non-majority and the over 60 plus percent of the projects will come from Europe. Coming back to U.S., U.S., as we are doing both small utility scale and middle to large size utility scale, but also we do community solar programs, those one to five megawatts. As I mentioned at the earnings script, that we do expect the booming growth of the community solar programs in the U.S. At the same time, we also see the greater demand of the medium-sized utility-scale projects. Throughout the years, in the last, I would say, 18 to 24 months, we do believe we are getting there, are well-positioned. to expand our pipeline in the U.S., in both sectors. So we hope we can grow our pipeline to at least in the same pace of the company in the U.S. One-third will come from the U.S. As you see our presentation, that 60-plus percent from Europe, 30-plus percent from U.S., and about 5 percent from China. So that proportion will continue as we expect.

Great. Okay. Really appreciate it. I'll pass it on. Thank you.

Thank you, Phil.

Our next question comes from Pavel Malkanov from Raymond James. You may begin.

Thanks for taking the question. Let me start with Europe where If I'm not mistaken, you added a new country in the last 100 days, and that's Italy. What encouraged you to enter the Italian market for the first time?

Italian actually have been there for a long time. We have not only formed two joint venture partnerships, but also we have a strong network in Italy. Italy has been one of the leading solar countries in Europe, one of the top five installations across Europe. And we believe it will present us great opportunities in the years ahead. And not only in the last 120 days, but also in the first quarter of this year, we continue our, I call it, very quick growth in Italy. And we'll start building our teams in every single country and expand our teams in every single country in Europe. Not every single country in Europe. We have activities, currently activities. One thing I have to remind everybody that we remain to be very focused. We have activities up to eight countries in Europe. We don't go to every country in Europe.

Right. Sorry, in that context, given the geopolitical backdrop of the war and the heightened focus on energy security, particularly in the frontline states in Eastern Europe, so you're already in Poland and Hungary, are you seeing any Substantive acceleration in demand in those Eastern EU members that have historically had the highest level of dependence on natural gas from Russia. So I'm thinking Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic, and the Baltic states, in addition to the countries you are already in.

Thanks. That's a good question. That's also driving us to always remaining to be focused. The two countries, as you mentioned, Poland and Hungary, are the front line of the neighboring territories. But we all believe that not only us, but also we extensively have discussions with our European partners. We are all very confident about the growth, especially in Poland. As you see the news, Poland has stopped importing natural gas from Russia, although they still have about over 80% of the coal power. So the EU's push to Poland or Poland's commitment to gold renewable energy has never been changed, or it will be speeded up with the crisis of Ukraine. and the investors, the financing parties, the banks, and our partners, we have extensive discussions about Poland, Hungary, and neighboring countries next to the crisis. They do not have any of those growth concerns. They may face some challenges near-term, but the mid-term, long-term, we absolutely see the strong growth from those countries.

Okay. final question for me one year ago you talked about adding IPP assets potentially in China and potentially outside of China as well for more recurring revenue so with the last 12 months have you made any progress on bolstering your generation portfolio?

The reason for us to consider light, we call so-called light IPP strategy, is to accumulate high and attractive return on the stable cash flow. As I mentioned, the China, the rooftop DG projects have provided the highest, the most attractive economic returns compared to any other territory we have project activities. So that is why we have this initiative IPP holding those as IPP assets in our portfolio. At the same time, we also have noticed that we have opportunities either from ourselves or from our partnerships that the requesting us to day long term in the IPP portfolios. And that's why I was to think carefully how we develop our IPP portfolio in Europe. Combine Europe and China IPP strategy, we call them as the overall IPP strategy. Not only we have abundant cash in our hand, but also we are actively raising more capital to fund our IPP strategy.

Understood. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you, Pablo.

Thank you. And as a reminder, that's star one for any questions, star one. Our next question comes from Amit Dayal from HC Wainwright. You may begin.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Just to begin with, you know, did you say you had sold 128 megawatts in 2021?

Yes, Amit. That's all the project we sold. Most of them are NTP, yes, in 2021. Yes.

And then, you know, for 2022, you're targeting around 300 megawatts. Did I get that correctly?

We're targeting 300 megawatts. Okay.

So, you know, what I'm trying to sort of circle back to is, you know, we did almost 80 million with 128 megawatts. But we're guiding for 100 to 120 with more than double megawatts potentially, you know, plans for sale in 2022. So why is this number a little bit lower than, you know, what it probably should look like, even though even if you have higher COD sales, that should push the revenue number a little bit higher. Just trying to understand, you know, this discrepancy. I understand your question. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes, I think the main reason is some of the large utility-scale projects in the U.S., their ASP is much lower than traditional community solar projects. So that's the main reason.

Okay, I understand. Adding a point there is in 2020 and 2021, all the projects we sold are almost every single one are the small ones. Small ones meaning one to five megawatts in range. And starting in 2022, we will sell middle-sized or some scale-sized projects

Okay. So that's one of the factors. I understand. And then on the margin side, again, you know, you're already doing, you know, the 20% level of margins with the COD type sales a few years ago. The expectations are you're going to move to, you know, 30% to 40% type gross margins with the NTP sales. The outlook is calling for higher NTP contribution next year or this year, sorry, 2022 years. but the margins are still trending, you know, at the COD type levels. So, um, again, you know, this, if you could clarify, you know, how we should look at what is going on here.

Sure. Um, with, uh, basically the NTP sale, we're still going to have a high margins, but, uh, uh, in terms of total revenue, uh, the COD sale, um, will have a bigger portion compared to NTP sales. So that drives the percentage of margin towards COD sales. But again, this year and starting last year, you see that supply chain challenge and cost challenges. So we have been conservative on the COD margin estimate. So I think COD sale margin will be in the teens, not in the 20s. So that's why you see the gross margin guidance between 20-25%.

Okay. And then in the pipeline, you know, you're targeting, you're at 2.2 gigawatts, you're targeting 3 gigawatts. The expectation was that you guys would probably be leaning more towards NTP, you know, in that mix. How do we think about that mix now? Given that sort of COB still is playing a role in impacting margins and rate sales. In that two to three gigawatts, how much is COB? How much is NTP? Any color on that example.

Okay. The majority of the sales will remain to be NTP sales. Just as I mentioned, the only one way are requested by our customers to present the COD sale case, just like in Europe. We will do it, as we are fully capable of doing so. So, I would say, even in this year or in the future years, currently, we are focusing on NTP sales.

Okay. Thank you. And then guidance around, you know, the IPP from China was 100 to 150 megawatts over the, you know, by 2022, end of this year. Is that still on track for you guys?

It is on track. We target, as the quarter ago, we say we target to end of 2022 to build additional 100 to 150 megawatts of the new project in China, adding to our light IPP asset capacity, and it's on track.

Okay, all right. Yeah, those are my questions for now. I'll take my other questions offline. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thanks. And once again, that's star one for questions, star one. Our next question will come from Marissa Hernandez from Siddoti. You may begin.

Good afternoon and thank you for taking my questions.

Good afternoon, Marissa.

If you could please clarify the following for me on the net profit guidance. I think you mentioned $9 to $10 million in 2022, which suggests that's gap basis, correct?

Yes, at this point, yes.

Yeah. So what would be the non-gap number that corresponds to that and is comparable to your $14.7 million non-gap?

net profit for 2021 I don't know if it's you know it's just direct translation or some put and take there yeah for long gap it's very hard to predict right now because we're beginning of this year but again we don't expect a whole lot variations here going forward So that's why we guided this as a gap. So, yeah.

Okay. And then just to clarify the mix of projects in 2022, you mentioned the utility scale. Is that one big project that you have contracted for 2022 or is it several ones?

There are several projects in 2022, especially a utility project in the United States.

Are they all based in the US?

Not all based in the US. Again, there's a big utility project in the US.

OK. So those utility-scale projects, I thought you said they are COD. Did I get that right? And if so, I want to know if you are doing... Not for the U.S.

project. Again, I think we said... I think you mentioned that COD project is mainly in Europe, mainly in Poland.

Utility project in Poland, and that's...

EUS, we only do NTPCL right now.

Okay. So what you are doing in Poland this year on the utility scale side, are you responsible for the EPC as well?

In Poland, yes. In Hungary, several projects will do EPC, but most others will do the NTPCL.

Okay, so how do you manage the materials procurement size of things? Have you already secured modules? What are your thoughts on how to manage that?

We have already started procurement of the modules in Europe for our projects in Poland and Hungary. And currently, the US is tough, but luckily we do not do COD sales in the US. Europe is still absolutely manageable, although the price is higher.

Okay. And of those 300 megawatts, give or take, that you're expecting to do in 2022, how many of those are these larger utility-scale projects? Just to have a sense of the mix.

We talk utility scale, including smaller or middle-sized utility scale, 20 to 40 megawatts, including some bigger ones. I would say it's about maybe half of the sales will be on the utility scale, and another half will be on the smaller deals.

When you say half, you're talking half of the megawatt number, yeah?

Yes.

As opposed to revenue.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you. Utility scale in Europe, we use the U.S. standard. When we say one to five megawatts, we don't count them as utility scale in Europe. We still count them as small farms.

Okay, and yeah, on that, changing gears a little bit, on that, sorry, before I do that, the one project that the timing did not occur in the fourth quarter and you're expecting mostly in the second quarter, can you share with us how big that project is in terms of megawatts or sale numbers?

That is the, in fact, that's the U.S. utility-scale middle-sized projects. And we are in the process to close that, the target to close that in Q2.

Okay. Can you share the size approximately, Yiming?

Twenty-plus megawatts.

Thank you. And my final question is on that receivable write-off related to the manufacturing business, I understood, Kay, that you said you don't expect any further write-offs. But are there any other receivables or any other sort of assets in your balance sheet related to the manufacturing business other than this last write-off?

No. No. Like I said, very minimal, not significant.

Okay, thank you. That's all I have.

Thank you, Marisa. Thank you.

And once again, that's star one for questions, star one. One more for questions. I'm not showing any further questions in the queue. I'll turn the call back over to Yumin for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator. To conclude, we are committed to growing profitability, managing our operations efficiently, and strengthening our financial positions. We are energized at opportunities in front of us and are looking forward to updating you on our progress again in a few months. Thank you all again for your participation. This concludes our call today. You may all disconnect.