Emeren Group Ltd

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for Ameren Group fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Please note that we are recording today's conference call. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Yuji Azai, Managing Director of the Blue Shirt Group. Please go ahead, Mr. Azai.

Thank you, Operator, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss fourth quarter 2022 results. We released our shareholder letter after the market closed today. It is available on our website at ir.mrun.com. We also provided a supplemental presentation that's posted on our IR website that we will reference during our prepared remarks. On the call with me today are Mr. Yiming Liu, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Keqian, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. John Yuen, CEO of North America. Before we continue, please turn to slide two. Let me remind you that remarks made during this call may include predictions estimates, and other information that might be considered forward-looking. These forward-looking statements represent MRIN Group'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 risk factors and elsewhere in MRIN's filings with SEC. Please do not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect MRIN's opinions only as of the date of this call. everyone is not obligated to update you on any revisions to these forward-looking statements. Also, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during this conference call are in U.S. dollars. With that, let me now turn the call over to Mr. Yumen Liu. Yumen?

Thank you, Yuja, and good day, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. I'll give a high-level summary of our full year 2022 results and then elaborate on recent strategic initiatives as well as to provide guidance for 2023. Then Ke, the company CFO, will review our financial results for Q4 in detail. After that, we'll be joined by our North American CEO, Jiang, for the Q&A. Beginning with our financial performance, we closed the year with 81.4 million revenue, 30.1% gross margin, and 17.4 million EBITDA. amid challenging market conditions caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict, volatile energy markets, inflation, supply chain disruptions, and rising interest rates. Despite these challenges, we continue to execute our core solar project development strategy, diversify our global footprint, and at once are positioning as a leading global solar company. Let me summarize our key accomplishments in 2022. First, we monetized about 192 megawatts of solar projects in 2022, compared to 128 megawatts in 2021. Those primarily include 70 megawatts of utility solar projects in Pennsylvania, 12 megawatts of community solar projects in the US, 58 megawatts of utility projects in Poland, and 12 megawatt utility projects in Germany. Second, we grow our project pipeline to our record 3 gigawatts. In the beginning of the 22, we set a goal to grow our mid- to late-stage pipeline to 3 gigawatts at the end of the year. Thanks to our team's strong execution in face of our challenging microenvironment and our strategic acquisitions, we achieved that goal. Third, we acquire a 50 megawatt fully operational Solar Farm in the UK, which initiated our European IPP strategy, which will add predictable and stable cash flows to complement our product sales business. Fourth, we acquired Ameren, an Italy-based utility-scale solar power and battery storage project developer. Ameren has over 2.5 gigawatts of pipeline under development at different stages including over 2 gigawatts of solar projects and over 500 megawatts of storage projects. Additionally, we commercialized our first inaugural IPP project in Hungary. The 10 megawatt project is our first self-developed and self-constructed IPP project in Hungary, which is another project to our growing IPP assets in Europe. And lastly, We accumulated over 1.5 gigawatt of storage pipeline. We are optimistic that storage business initiatives and growing pipeline will become an important growth driver for the company. We expect contribution from our storage business beginning from this year. Looking forward to 2023 and beyond, we are well positioned in the world's fastest growing solar markets. that are benefiting from increasing demand for clean energy, rising PPA price, and supportive government policies. For our project development business, we continue to see strong demand for solar projects globally. We entered 2023 with three gigawatts of high-quality mid- to late-stage pipeline, and we anticipate to monetize approximately 400 to 450 megawatts in 2023, and we are targeting to grow this pipeline to four gigawatts by the end of 2023. Beyond 2023, we are targeting to monetize a minimum of 500 to 600 megawatts a year. We are excited for strong contribution from our recent acquisitions, Princeton Solar Farm and Airman platform. We expect this assets to contribute approximately $20 million revenue, and $10 million EBITDA in 2023. Regarding our IPP strategy in Hungary, as a result of S&P and Fitch negative revisions to Hungary's credit rating in January 2023, due to persistently high inflation, economic weakness, and external foreign policy pressures, we have decided to explore the sale of our previously announced 50 megawatt projects in Hungary, which we expect to close sometime in the first half. For IPP strategy in Europe, including Poland, we will continue to build our planned 50 megawatt projects, but now anticipate the completion to be closer to the end of the year. In China, we are aligning our strategy to the rest of the world as develop, build, own, or sell compared to the original strategy of develop, build, and own as IPP. In conjunction, we are refocusing our efforts to five provinces that have the most favorable power prices and regulatory environment. We anticipate setting all our solar assets outside of these five provinces and some in these five focus markets, which will help strengthen our balance sheet. China made some payment of its previous renewable energy subsidies at the end of Q4 2022 and Q1 2023, of which we received approximately $8 million. This is extremely positive for the sector and increases the values of our assets in China. In terms of guidance, We expect 2023 full-year revenue to be in the range of $140 to $160 million. We expect gross margin to be approximately 30%, and net income to be between $17 million to $21 million. Ke will provide more details on our guidance momentarily. Now, let me turn the call over to our CFO, Ke Chen, to discuss our financial performance. Ke?