Array Technologies Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
February 27, 2024

There are 15 speakers on the call.

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Array Technologies 4th Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to introduce your host, Cody Mueller, Investor Relations at Array.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you, and welcome to Array Technologies' 4th quarter 2023 financial conference call. On the call with me today are Kevin Hostetler, our CEO and Kurt Wood, our CFO. Today's call is being webcast from our Investor Relations site at ir. Arraytechinc.com, including audio and slides. In addition, the press release detailing our quarterly results has been posted on the website.

Speaker 1

Today's discussion of financial results is presented on a non GAAP financial basis unless otherwise specified. A reconciliation of GAAP to non GAAP financial measures can be found on our website. We encourage you to visit our website at arraytechinc.com throughout the quarter for the most current information on the company, including information on financial conferences that we may be attending. As a reminder, the matters we are discussing today include forward looking statements regarding market demand and supply, our expected results and other matters. These forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from the statements made today.

Speaker 1

We refer you to the documents we file with the SEC, including our most recent Form 10 ks for a recent discussion of risks that may affect our future results. Although we believe that the expectations We are under no duty to update any of the forward looking statements to conform these statements to actual results. I'll now turn

Speaker 2

the call over to Kevin. Thank you, Cody. Good afternoon, everyone.

Speaker 3

First, turning to Slide 3, I'll give some highlights from our Q4 and our full year results. We delivered a record year across almost every metric we track. We exited the year with an order book in excess of $1,800,000,000 on strong new bookings momentum in the 4th quarter. On a global basis, our book to bill ratio was 1.7 with Q4 bookings coming in at approximately $600,000,000 The sequential growth in bookings and resulting increase of our order book further highlights the improved pipeline we discussed last quarter and is a testament to our winning product and services portfolio including energy optimization software and severe weather mitigation solutions that enable an attractive levelized cost of energy for our customers. I will speak more broadly about our order book and what we are seeing in the market in a few moments.

Speaker 3

Revenue for the full year came in at $1,580,000,000 which was above the high end of our latest guidance range. Full year adjusted gross margin was 27.3 percent inclusive of approximately $9,300,000 of 45x benefit recognized to the P and L in the 4th quarter. This represents a year over year increase of 1300 basis points and is a record for Array as a public company. Our performance here is largely demonstrating the structural changes we have successfully executed around how we price, how we procure materials and how we design for value optimization in our new product introductions and existing products alike. With the 2023 proof point in hand coupled with the upside from the 45x manufacturing credits, we are confident in our ability to deliver annual adjusted gross margin percentage in the low 30s in 2024.

Speaker 3

Adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $288,000,000 which was the highest year on record by over $100,000,000 and marks the 2nd consecutive year where this metric has more than doubled. On a full year basis, we generated $215,000,000 of free cash flow, which was $100,000,000 higher than the outlook we provided at the beginning of 2023. We strengthened the balance sheet throughout the year and ended with $250,000,000 of cash on hand and we now maintain a historically high level of liquidity at $424,000,000 when factoring in our undrawn revolving credit capacity. This leaves us well positioned to fund growth while continuing to deleverage our balance sheet. Now please turn to Slide 4, where we will discuss our capacity, domestic content and 45x.

Speaker 3

From an operational standpoint, we expanded our domestic and international supplier base and now have more than 30 gigawatts of deliverable capacity in the U. S. And total capacity nearing 50 gigawatts across the globe. At the same time, with our enhanced focus on supply chain resiliency, we added additional sources of supply for several critical components throughout the year. We did this while simultaneously achieving both lower inventory levels and record on time delivery performance.

Speaker 3

Our strong execution and proactive build out of our domestic supply chain and manufacturing capabilities allows us to achieve domestic content levels in the mid-eighty percent level and higher depending upon project configuration in high volume not only on a one off basis. This level of scale will be critical as the domestic content become better understood and more relevant to our customers over time. As many of you are aware, in December, the IRS published additional guidance on the 45x manufacturing benefits that largely confirmed our previous understanding of the eligibility of our torque tube. In late 2023 early 2024, we successfully negotiated agreements with key suppliers around domestic content incentives associated with our torque tube. This resulted in us earning $50,000,000 of 45x benefit in our financial statements in the 4th quarter, which included a catch up for certain volumes delivered earlier in 2023.

Speaker 3

Approximately $9,000,000 was recorded as a benefit to our P and L and the remainder was recorded on our balance sheet and will be recognized to the P and L throughout 2024. Unfortunately, the 45x guidance published in December did not further clarify what would be considered a structural fastener. We continue to expect there will be additional benefits we can monetize for a number of our components under the definition of structural fasteners and we are actively working multiple initiatives to obtain clarity regarding specific eligibility. In parallel, we are continuing to negotiate the economic split with our supply base for parts we do not manufacture internally. It is our belief that the inclusion of these structural fastener components was the spirit behind the initial framework and the intent of the legislation.

Speaker 3

We will provide additional updates on future calls as more information becomes available. I'd like to now transition to our product, software and service offerings. During 2023, we strengthened our product, services and software portfolio with the launch of 2 new tracker platforms. The expansion of our SmartTrak software to provide automated hail and snow response and the rollout of our new service offerings. This is all on top of numerous other improvements that have driven down our installed cost and improved our customer experience.

Speaker 3

Turning to Slide 5, as I mentioned earlier, I would like to provide additional color around current market dynamics and our order book. After gaining meaningful market share in 2021 2022, we chose not to pursue business in the first half of twenty twenty three that would not generate a threshold level of financial return or would require us to assume elevated risk. As we entered the second half of twenty twenty three, we were seeing the fruits of our structural cost enhancements and the implementation of more real time processes around logistics and commodity costing come online, which allowed us to achieve lower price points while still sustainably achieving our margin expansion goals. With our structural cost enhancements firmly in place and the market moving away from the short term high risk pricing environment, we saw our pipeline triple and our win rate increase, which are both important leading indicators of bookings and order book momentum. This was evidenced by the $900,000,000 of new orders cumulatively received in the second half of twenty twenty three and a 1.7 times book to bill ratio in the 4th quarter.

Speaker 3

As we look into our order book, we continue to see a consistent quality of customers as we have historically. The percentage of our executed contracts with Tier 1 customers has remained over 80% for the last 2 years. That being said, we are also seeing new customers enter our pipeline. Our order book stands at over $1,800,000,000 as of year end, excluding any BCAs that don't have a named project and or defined start date. The projects that we willingly walked away from in the first half of last year, coupled with the increase in project delays and push outs are disproportionately impacting the first half of twenty twenty four revenues as it resulted in our order book being more weighted towards the second half of twenty twenty four and into 2025 than historically would be the case at this point of the year.

Speaker 3

As it relates to project push out that we highlighted on our last call, we are still seeing several industry wide factors that are impacting project start dates, particularly in the first half of twenty twenty four. The most common issues we are hearing are around permitting and interconnection, supply chain delays on long lead time equipment and timing of financing. It is also important to point out that while we are seeing these delays fairly well represented across all types of customers, utilities included, there are a handful of our customers who are not seeing an impact and projects are moving forward in a more normalized manner. Looking ahead, we are guiding full year 2024 revenue between $1,250,000,000 $1,400,000,000 representing a 16% decline at the midpoint versus 2023 on relatively flat volume. We expect ASPs will be down year over year, primarily due to declining commodity input costs.

Speaker 3

However, we will again see adjusted gross margin expand to the low 30% range and expect to see year over year growth in both absolute adjusted EBITDA dollars and as a percentage of revenue. Our revenues will be more back end loaded with just under 30% of our revenues expected to materialize in the first half of the year, reflecting the order book dynamics I spoke about earlier. Q1 will be a trough with revenue in the range of $1,000,000 to $145,000,000 followed by continued sequential growth for the remainder of the year and overall year over year growth returning in the second half. Kurt will now provide additional color on 2023 results and our 2024 outlook. I'll then give some concluding remarks before opening the line for questions.

Speaker 3

Curt?

Speaker 4

Thanks, Kevin. I would like to start off by providing some additional details around the Q4 and full year 2023 results. I'd ask that you turn your attention to Slide 7. As Kevin mentioned, 2023 was a record year on many fronts and we were able to deliver a highly profitable year despite the headwinds that came our way via project push outs. In the 4th quarter, we delivered $342,000,000 in revenue above the top end of the guidance range provided on our Q3 earnings call and down approximately 15% from the prior year period.

Speaker 4

We shipped 3.3 gigawatts in the 4th quarter, which was roughly flat versus the prior year. At the heart of the year over year decline in revenue was lower ASP driven by a reduction in global commodity costs. As a reminder, when commodity costs move up or down, we generally pass the movement on to our customers. Putting the revenue by geography, the 3 $42,000,000 was comprised of $278,000,000 $64,000,000 from the legacy RA and STI units respectively. We saw 4th quarter adjusted gross margin expand by 5 20 basis points on a year over year basis to 25.7 percent.

Speaker 4

Inclusive of the $9,300,000 of 45x benefit to cost of sales realized in the quarter. Our ability to expand margins on relatively flat volume and lower revenue is directly attributable to the structural changes Kevin highlighted earlier. Our Q4 adjusted gross margin was negatively impacted by approximately 250 basis points due to one time entries in our STI segment related to inventory adjustments. Absent those anomalies, STI's adjusted Q4, 2023 gross margin would have been in the mid-20s as expected. I now like to expand further on the 45x benefits.

Speaker 4

In the Q4, we recorded a $50,000,000 benefit to our financials relating to Tortue with $9,300,000 included as a reduction to our cost of goods sold and $40,600,000 treated as a gross up to the balance sheet in the form of an increase to both other assets and other current liabilities. The entire benefit relates to certain volumes delivered during 2023, but based on the structure of the contract with each vendor and the timing when the contract was executed, $41,000,000 of the amount we are entitled to will not materialize on the P and L until 2024. As Kevin noted earlier, we expect to see additional benefits in future periods relating to our 2023 volumes based on how eligibility for structural fasteners is determined. Operating expenses of $54,000,000 were down approximately 11% from the $60,500,000 during the same period of the previous year. This decline was driven by an improvement in amortization expense relating to certain intangible assets from the STI acquisition.

Speaker 4

The decrease was partially offset by a couple one time items that combined for nearly $5,000,000 of expense in the period, including a reserve for value added tax or VAT due to a ruling received from the European Tax Authority in the 4th quarter on the refundability of certain VAT items and a reserve on certain outstanding overdue receivables. Both of these adjustments were related to items that occurred prior to 2023. Net income attributable to common shareholders was $6,000,000 compared to a loss of $17,300,000 during the same period in the prior year. And basic and diluted income per share was 0 point $4 compared to basic and diluted loss per share of $0.11

Speaker 2

during the same period in 2022.

Speaker 4

Adjusted net income increased to $31,400,000 compared to adjusted net income of $15,000,000 during the Q4 of 2024 and adjusted basic and diluted net income per share was $0.21 compared to adjusted basic and diluted net income per share of $0.10 during the prior year period. Finally, our free cash flow for the period was $88,600,000 versus $93,500,000 for the same period

Speaker 3

in the prior year.

Speaker 4

Kevin spoke to many of the full year metrics, so I'll just briefly cover these again on Slide 8. Full year revenue was $1,577,000,000 representing a 4% revenue decline versus 2022. This decline was primarily attributable to a reduction in ASP resulting from the lower commodity pricing on relatively flat volume and the change in the Brazilian ICMS benefit treatment. As a reminder, we discussed on the last call how in prior years the impact of the Brazil value added tax or ICMS was treated as an adder to revenue and starting in 2023 it was transacted as a reduction to cost of sales. For 2023 this amounted to $23,200,000 less revenue relative to the 2022 comparison.

Speaker 4

Adjusted gross profit increased to $430,100,000 from $234,100,000 in the prior year, again driven by the expansion of our baseline gross margin from the structural enhancements we made to our business and to a lesser effect the $9,300,000 of 45x benefit that was recorded in the 4th quarter. Operating expenses decreased to $201,400,000 from $230,900,000 in the prior year. The lower expenses were primarily related to $46,900,000 decrease in intangible amortization expense related to the STI acquisition, partially offset by higher headcount related costs to drive process improvement, operational execution and product innovation. Net income attributable to common shareholders was $85,500,000 compared to a loss of $43,600,000 in the prior year. And basic and diluted income per share was $0.57 and $0.56 compared to basic and diluted loss per share of $0.29 in the prior year.

Speaker 4

Adjusted EBITDA more than doubled to $288,100,000 compared to $128,700,000 in the prior period. Adjusted net income increased by approximately 3 times to $171,300,000 compared to $57,300,000 during the prior year and adjusted basic and diluted net income per share was 1 point $1.3 compared to $0.38 in the prior year. Finally, our free cash flow for the year was 2 $15,000,000 compared to $130,900,000 in the prior year. Excluding the $42,800,000 legal settlement approximately $250,000,000 of cash on hand and total liquidity of $424,000,000 factoring in capacity in our undrawn revolver. Throughout the year, we paid down $87,000,000 of our debt, including nearly $75,000,000,000 of principal on our term loan.

Speaker 4

We ended the year with a net leverage ratio of 1.6 excluding our preferred shares. Now I'd like to go to Slide 9, where I will discuss our outlook 2024. I want to begin by noting that we will be providing guidance as 1 consolidated array segment going forward, rather than breaking out array and STI. This change is reflective of how we are managing our business following the successful integration of STI and streamlining of our collective processes. Where it helpful, we will continue to give regional and product commentary for additional color on our business performance throughout the year.

Speaker 4

Additionally, starting in 2024, we will be reporting all metrics on an all in basis inclusive of 45x benefits. 2023 was a transitional year and warranted a specific call out of the benefit given the number of uncertainties around its treatment. In future periods, we will call out any material differences in our assumptions, including those resulting around the inclusion of structural fasteners within the 45x benefit to the extent there are any. We expect full year 2024 revenue to be within the range of $1,250,000,000 to $1,400,000,000 As Kevin discussed earlier, there are a number of dynamics driving our outlook. Primarily, we are forecasting a reduction in ASP of low double digit percent year over year driven by lower input costs, our ability to lower price due to our lower cost structure and the pass through of a portion of the 45x benefit to our customers as we strive to lower the overall cost of solar generation for the industry.

Speaker 4

From a linearity perspective, the year will be more weighted towards the second half. Q1 will be the trough with revenues at approximately $135,000,000 to $145,000,000 before we begin to see sequential growth in the 2nd quarter, which then continues in earnest in the second half. To that end, we are expecting year over year revenue growth in the second half of the year when compared to the second half of twenty twenty three. Inclusive of 45x benefits from our torque tube, we expect our adjusted gross margins to be in the low-30s for the year. As you would expect on a quarterly basis, this may fluctuate slightly based on product mix, project mix and fixed cost absorption.

Speaker 4

For adjusted SG and A, we expect approximately $33,000,000 to $35,000,000 per quarter, which is slightly down from a dollar standpoint compared to 2023. $315,000,000 This guidance is driven by the improvement in profitability from our structural cost enhancements that drive efficiency and scale as well as the 45x benefits for our torque tube. At the midpoint, this represents a 4 percentage point increase in adjusted EBITDA and a 430 basis point improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin year over year marking the 3rd consecutive year in both dollar and percent of revenue expansion. For adjusted diluted earnings per share, we anticipate a range of $1 to $1.15 which represents a 5% year over year decline at the midpoint. This decrease is largely due to an effective tax rate increase related to a change in tax treatment of the ICMS benefit in Brazil.

Speaker 4

Previously, this benefit was tax exempt, but will now become subject to the federal Brazil taxation beginning in 2024. As such, we expect our effective tax rate for the year to be between 26 percent 28%. We expect preferred dividends will be approximately $14,000,000 on a quarterly basis, of which approximately 6,000,000 dollars will be the cash or PIK portion and the remaining will be the amortization of the discount. We expect free cash flow to be between $100,000,000 $150,000,000 in 2024, which is inclusive of our estimate of the cash received during the year from the 45x torx tube benefit. I would point out here that a large portion of the expected cash benefit will occur later than the P and L benefit due to the timing of the payments from the IRS.

Speaker 4

Embedded in our free cash flow forecast is the CapEx assumption of $25,000,000 to $30,000,000 Now I'll turn the call back over to Kevin for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Kurt. I want

Speaker 3

to again highlight our record 2023 financial performance. The structural enhancements we made to our cost structure and the strong top line momentum we are seeing for the second half of twenty twenty four and into 2025. We made a lot of progress as a business over the last few quarters and are confident that this will lead to sustainable and profitable growth as we continue our journey. I'm very proud of what our team accomplished in 2023 and I want to take a moment to thank our hardworking employees for all of their dedicated efforts. We will now open the call up for questions.

Speaker 3

Operator?

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. Thank you. Our first question comes from the line of Mark Strouse with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 5

Yes, good evening. Thank you very much for taking our questions. I wanted to start with the 2024 outlook and the revenue decline. I fully appreciate kind of the first half of twenty twenty three, being more selective on higher margin projects that created a bit of a hole that you needed to fill. Just trying to compare what we're hearing to today to what we heard on the 3Q call though, as far as the project delays, are there continued delays in those projects that you were seeing back then?

Speaker 5

Are there incremental delays? Just anything you can do to kind of help me compartmentalize what's happening here? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thanks for your question, Mark. This is Kevin. Yes, relative to the project delays, what we've seen is a continuing delays and push outs of projects for many of the same issues that we talked about earlier on the call. So we've I'll highlight them again, but certainly some related to interest rates and financing and some confusion around the tax equity transfer rules. There's still lack of clarity around the IRA and we still as I'm engaging our customers still hearing of orders sitting on the sidelines waiting for better clarity around the overall domestic content pattern to the ITC.

Speaker 3

What we're hearing more of now than we have previously are really about supply chain issues and that's really related to shortages of long lead time items of switches, transformers and the one that keeps coming up as being very acute is on high voltage breakers. And these are placing interconnection queues at risk and we're hearing about that throughout. Now that is not ubiquitous. There are certain customers and utilities that were able to safe harbor lots of electrical equipment. And we're finding that those are the ones that seemingly are moving forward with projects now unabated.

Speaker 3

Those that have a huge supply of those electrical components in particular that fit their design criteria. And last, permitting delays, long queues accentuated by the dramatic increase in solar and solar plus battery. So in many municipalities, we're getting used to doing solar projects. The addition of the battery storage to sites that we're seeing that increasing as a percentage is creating again confusion and permitting delays. Really the same set, there's continuing on.

Speaker 3

And what we're seeing in the order book and how it translates to the order book is that customers are beginning to bake those delays into their order book. And that's when we talked about in our prepared remarks of a higher proportion of orders that are coming now where they're getting themselves a couple of extra quarters for that work to begin as they solve some of these issues.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then, Curt, just a couple of quick questions on 45x here. Are you planning are you able to today or are you planning in 2024 to provide kind of what the gross margin is excluding 45x just so we can get a sense of kind of what your structural margin improvements that you've been talking about are? And then second, the low 30s outlook for 2024, does that include the 41,000,000 dollars of catch up from 2023?

Speaker 4

Yes, great questions. We are still sticking to our structural margin in the mid-20s percent range. We think that holds solid. You saw that in the Q4 as well, if you take out the one time items there that we were settled with. And then, yes, the low 30s does take into account the 40%.

Speaker 4

And you got to remember where it takes into a couple of things, our margin takes into our cost enhancements that we've done that allow us to lower the price and still maintain our margin profile that we want. It takes into account the 45x credits that we're talking about here and it takes into account a certain pass through of the 45x that we'll pass along to the customers on new deals that we signed going forward. So it's got all that in, but it doesn't have in there is any additional contracts that we may sign. And in our prepared remarks, we talked about structural fasteners and what might be included in there. So that would be upside if those materialize as well as any other deals that we negotiate with our vendors going forward.

Speaker 4

And we don't want to give specifics, obviously that puts us at a disadvantage when we're negotiating some of these things.

Speaker 5

Okay. I'll take the rest offline. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Christine Cho with Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 6

Yes. Hey, guys. This is Yol on for Christine. Just one quick one for me. What sort of bookings are waiting on the sideline?

Speaker 6

You show this chart where your high probability pipeline tripled since 4Q 2022. So I'm wondering what actually needs to happen for this to be converted?

Speaker 3

Yes. It's a great question. So what we typically see momentum in our business is you go from overall pipeline, meaning pipeline that's down in that 25% range to when it becomes over 50%, it becomes the high probability pipeline. That so we're waiting on in some cases an EPC to be named. In other cases, it's still competitive even at 50%.

Speaker 3

There may be a portion of that that we're still competing with 1 of our peer companies to get that business. But what we measure is that trend of high probability pipeline then once it goes from 50 to 75, that's when it begins to convert to verbal orders. So that's really the trend. So what we look at that trend is the overall what's coming into the funnel, what's getting through the stage gates in the funnel in terms of quality of that order and our position to win that order, that's where it gets into the high probability. So that's really an indication of the momentum we're seeing in the business of tripling of that high probability pipeline is very significant to us.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Julien Dumoulin Smith with Bank of America. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 7

Cameron Loughridge on from BofA for Julien. Quick one for me. And so they kind of tie together, just asking both in tandem. First, on the backlog, can you speak a little bit to I appreciate the commentary around some of the customer delays and things of that nature, interconnection permitting, things like that. Are you seeing any project churn in the backlog?

Speaker 7

Any projects coming out of backlog as a result of some of these delays whether those projects are perhaps being sold to others or what have you at the customer level? And then at the same time, just U. S. And international dynamics in 4Q and how those kind of play out in 2024?

Speaker 3

I'll certainly take the first one. I'll let Kirk talk about the specific Q4 bookings. So look, we have only when we put a project into our backlog, we're pretty sure that that product project rather is going to go forward. It may be delayed, but we've only we modeled this out actually in the last few months. We've only ever had 2 projects pull out of backlog and get canceled.

Speaker 3

Certainly, that's domestically. Internationally, as you do some of the smaller projects and the Brazilian forgiveness days, a little bit different to that. But I'll broadly speak to our North American backlog. And that's only 2 projects ever. We are in fact seeing some projects get sold.

Speaker 3

Some developers are coming in and taking advantage of the fact that others are having supply issues and they're coming in and refinancing and moving those. And in some cases, we're benefiting from that in terms of some of the developers doing that work are, for lack of a better word, friends of Array and we're picking up some additional orders and they're converting it from other suppliers to array as they do that business. So, so far we've not seen any meaningful cancellations at all. And in fact, we're benefiting from some of this secondary market emerging from these projects getting bought and sold prior to completion.

Speaker 4

And for the second part of your question on the U. S. And international dynamics, you'll see when we post our K out in the next day or so that we've got about in Q4 75 percent U. S, 25 percent -ish of our revenue was domestic or was international, excuse me. As we look into the first half of the year, we talked about the first softness in the first half.

Speaker 4

Obviously, that's hard to overcome. So we do expect overall a decline in U. S. Volumes year over year. First half will be down, second half will be up as we talked about and then we'll see a little bit more meaningful growth on our international locations including Spain and Brazil.

Speaker 7

Perfect. Thank you, guys. I'll pass it

Speaker 2

back. Welcome, Cameron.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 8

Hey guys, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. I had a couple. I apologize, I jumped on late. So if

Speaker 1

you did cover these, I apologize in advance.

Speaker 8

On the gross margin guidance, last year you were talking about mid to high 20s ex IRA. Are you expecting the same level in 2024 ex IRA? Are you actually targeting gross margin expansion into the 30s ex the IRA? Maybe just give us some of the break down of the overall margin guidance and what's embedded in there for kind of core margin versus what IRA is adding this year?

Speaker 4

On that one specifically, I'd say you got to break it up. The U. S, we definitely expect to be in the higher than what we said on the call, which was consolidated 25%. So kind of mid to high 20s for the U. S.

Speaker 4

And then obviously mid-20s for the international units. So combined that's where you get free any 45x or IRA benefit. And then on a consolidated basis, the low 30% range for gross margin is an all in number inclusive of the benefits from any new incentive program that's out

Speaker 1

there. Okay, fair enough. That's helpful. And then,

Speaker 8

I know it sounds like there's already been a decent number of questions and you're providing some thought process around why the revenue guidance on paper looks like it's softer than what the backlog you ended the year with would kind of entail. So maybe just taking even a further step back, you talked about a flat volume view for the year. It seems like peers are growing faster and some of the utility scale forecasts for the U. S. Are all up double digits, 10%, fifteen percent this year.

Speaker 8

So maybe just kind of walk through for you specifically what's different? Is it customer mix? Is it share? Just kind of trying to understand and reconcile the build to the flat volume view for you this year and after last year where you already had some push outs and just expectations for 2023. So just trying to reconcile a bit here.

Speaker 8

Yes,

Speaker 3

I think that's a great question. I'd love to answer that question. We have seen a lot of notes recently about market share changes and shifts. And let me start by reminding everyone that this is fundamentally a large project business where a few projects can have an outsized impact on either the shorter term windows of share, which is why really in the general practice, we don't overly focus on quarter over quarter market share statistics. I'll remind you in my prepared remarks, I tried to remind you that not too long ago we were discussing the dramatic market share gains array secured in both 2021 2022.

Speaker 3

So that being said, let me talk a few talk about a few items I think about relative to the market share change. First, we've discussed previously and in our prepared remarks that there was a period of time in early 2023 where our primary objective and my role here was to help demonstrate a margin recovery for the business and build a backlog of high quality for the business. We've talked about this before that in doing so, we brought in less projects into our pipeline to actively pursue in the first half of twenty twenty three. We temporarily ceded a portion of projects to our competitors based on what we saw was dramatically lower pricing and terms that we felt were just simply too risky for our business. These projects are now being delivered in the first half of twenty twenty four.

Speaker 3

We see that. And in retrospect, we have yielded a bit more on some of these orders and still hit our committed mid-20s margin, perhaps we could have. But the reality is our focus was on improving our pricing to our customers without sacrificing margins to do this. And we were so focused on methodically attacking our cost structure. We focus really on increasing our global strategic sourcing.

Speaker 3

We really did a deep dive review of our internal engineering and design standards. And we invested in the last 2 years nearly $11,000,000 in improved IT systems and cybersecurity systems that would inherently improve our visibility to our bill of materials, our cost structure, our logistics operations for every project that we do. In engaging with our customers, it was really important to our customers that the cost reductions that we were able to provide them were structural in nature and therefore they could count on these into the future as they realign and do business with Array. And to be clear, we're not out there trying to buy business and that's evidenced by our committed 2024 expanding gross margins. I'm confident that if you go out and pull the marketplace today, you'll find these structural cost reductions are becoming very apparent to our customers and they're making a difference in our win rates on projects.

Speaker 3

We're actually seeing win rates substantially increase from that pipeline and funnel we talked about earlier. Since completing the first two planned initiatives for cost reduction, we've seen a marked improvement in the high probability pipeline that we noted in the presentation and it's nearly 3 times larger than at the end of Q2 and that's what drove the really strong Q4 bookings on the back of this. Earlier this month, we completed our 3rd structural cost reduction initiative. This one was all about emphasizing automation and optimization of some of our engineering calculations that were all about reducing our customers' costs through optimizing the foundations they would be required to purchase and put into the ground. So again, that's not one that reduces our cost, but we're focusing beyond our cost into our customers' costs and identifying ways that we can reduce their costs.

Speaker 3

The second thing is, we continue to see project timing be negatively impacted by the factors we talked about in one of the first questions that we got asked. The supply chain issues, permitting, interconnect delays, IRA clarity, timing of financing, all of the above. And then last, I would just note that we saw strong bookings in the 4th quarter. But one of the things we are seeing as I indicated just a minute ago is we're seeing projects get awarded for longer time periods than we have historically. Our customers are now building in a couple of quarters of buffer and what they're doing is locking in capacity with us.

Speaker 3

I think this is really our customers' desire to buy more time to clear some of the project timing challenges. But obviously this limits our ability to fill in more near term revenue than we would have historically. Like others in our industry, we keep a portfolio of lots of projects. And historically, we've been able we would be able to work with kind of cycles that we're seeing in our stated backlog. Kind of cycles that we're seeing in our stated backlog.

Speaker 3

But I think that to just put a topping on this, I don't see any real dislocation or any indication of a longer trend. There's not been a killer app or any major new product that diminishes the strength of our product and services and software portfolio. There is a short term dislocation based on what we previously discussed. I can tell you in the last 3 months, I've been in front of over 20 of our largest customers and we continue to receive great feedback from our customers on our current product, software, service offerings as well as high marks for many of the operational and business improvements we've been making over the last 2 years. And most recently, I can tell you I'm receiving very positive feedback on our increasingly competitive pricing position.

Speaker 3

So that's really what's driving that early Q1 results and that's why we're very confident calling it the trough. We're seeing that backlog and pipeline momentum, and we're certainly going to lean into that as we build the back half of our year here.

Speaker 8

Appreciate all that color. And maybe just the last one, if I could squeeze in and taking all that into account, I mean, I don't want to put words in your mouth, Kevin, but it sounds like first half of the year, maybe you're because of all the circumstances you just outlined, you're under growing the market, but then back half of the year back to like being in line with market growth trends, if that's the way to read it?

Speaker 3

Yes. I think it

Speaker 4

would be maybe even better in

Speaker 3

the back half than how you've left it. If we just simply look at the win rate percentages, I think we feel really good about the direction of our business at this point.

Speaker 1

Okay, fair enough. That's great. Thank you. Pass it on.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Maheep Mandloi with Mizuho. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 6

Hi, this is David Benjamin on for Maheep. I was just wondering if you guys expect to see the same sort of gross margin breakdown in the first half versus the second half despite the delta in revenues?

Speaker 4

It will be roughly, this is obviously slightly lower probably in the first half given the lower scale, but not on a material basis. We expect it to be fairly constant. However, I would note out that as project mix and everything else, it gets moved quarter to quarter. You saw that in 2023 in past years, but we should be relatively consistent slightly better in the second half than the first half.

Speaker 6

Thanks very much. And is there also any of that due to or could you talk a little bit about like ASPs between international business and U. S? You mentioned cost downs. Are you applying those to customers both domestically, internationally?

Speaker 4

One of the great things about the product base that we have is this applied universally. Obviously, there's some geographic differences you have to do for compliance, but generally the cost savings we do will pass on to customers or will be in our product to help the margin and or ASP there. And each margin has a slightly different dynamic. We approach it on a portfolio basis. As you can imagine, as you're seeing new markets, you might go in with a little bit more aggressive pricing and you will add more established products.

Speaker 4

But as long as you're looking at it on a portfolio basis, you're generally covered and that's how we do it. Try not to give too much color on a region by region specific just for competitive and customer related info. We don't want to give that secret sauce out so to speak.

Speaker 3

But the one thing I will note that on the international there's obviously not a pass through of the 45x benefits clearly.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Donovan Shafer with Northland Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 9

Hey, guys. So I want to ask about the H250 tracker. I know I think when you initially and really focusing on the U. S. Actually at the moment.

Speaker 9

So when you initially launched, you kind of had a push pull design, I think like a lot of the other 2 row tracker companies do. I know you've switched, I think we saw at Replus, you have the kind of more elevated 2 linked rotary because that was kind of required for the U. S. So has that like just if we can get an update on like kind of the rollout there and what was like the backlog, the large increase in backlog that you had in this quarter. If you could give us kind of the mix of H250 versus DuraTrac or OmniTrak or if you could just give us some whether it's more quantitative or cause I mean has it risen to a level of like materiality and moving a needle and is that part of what drove that increase?

Speaker 9

Anything to help us understand like the nexus of that with price with the conversations about prices ASPs and such?

Speaker 3

So what's really been happening, Jonathan, the whole point of us launching the H250 was to have a tracker at a lower price point to be able to compete with those super CapEx sensitive customers and there's a handful of them, right, that are out there. And what we found that's really building is that as we've reduced our price on the core DuraTrac that is putting a lot of pressure on those competitors to have those price sensitive and our win rate against those products using DuraTrac has really gone way up. So what we're seeing is customers are preferring the DuraTrac at the lower price point far better than saying, hey, let's go and chase the H250 up against this other competitive platform, right? So that's what we're seeing. We still have a large backlog of quotes on the H250.

Speaker 3

We're still pursuing that and we think that's really important because as those competitors and some have publicly even noted that they're getting pricing pressure to reduce their price, that's where the H250 will come into play. But what we've seen thus far is a big uptick in the sale of DuraTrac versus those competitors that we targeted the H250 at. And while you're on it, let me address Omni Track as well. We have began getting orders, real orders for Omni Track. And as we've said all along, we expect that to kind of be at that 10% to 15% of the overall share domestically versus DuraTrac.

Speaker 3

And I think that's really beginning to play out in kind of that volume range, if you will. So the orders in hand, I think we're already nearly just over half of our anticipated volume for this year already. So that's beginning to translate pretty good for us at this point. And what's more important is that's translating to our customers and that it's a very small price premium to the customers and that's really related to the fact that you may need a couple of more foundation or posts to utilize that, but it's far more offset by the amount of grading savings to our customers. So net net that omnitrack is providing the customers several percentage points of improvement in a project even relative to DuraTrac.

Speaker 3

So we're seeing that traction. And I think that traction is going to accelerate as more of the EPCs work with civil engineering companies and learn how to design in that product as we go forward.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Joseph Alscha with Guggenheim Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 10

Yes, thank you. When you discussed some of the push outs and timing issues that you've seen, one of the issues that didn't come up is cost of capital in terms of the things your developers are struggling with. I'm wondering if in the course of your conversations that is something that has come up as a factor. And if you don't mind also, I do want to quickly follow-up on the previous question. Is it your intention still to take H250 and drive it into the lower ASP segment of the market?

Speaker 10

Or is am I hearing a more fundamental shift in your strategy vis a vis that and to attract? Thank you.

Speaker 3

So let me I'll take the latter first if you don't mind. No, we still intend to have the H250 as a lower value product to be able to compete with others that may drop their price in order to maintain their market share in that segment. But again, what we're truly seeing now is much more as we move our value line closer, that trade off between us and one of those lower priced competitors becomes somewhat negligible with our advantages and installation costs when you add those in and that's what we're seeing. So we're seeing people start that project and say, look, this is a much better, much more competitive price. I'm going to go ahead and start the project with the DuraTrac.

Speaker 3

We are the H250 is ready to go. Obviously, we have lots of quotes in there for that and internationally it's really, really quoting off the charts at this point. We feel great about that. So what we're really focused on is having that ready to be a response so that we don't have to further decline the DuraTrac price. We can do that with the H250.

Speaker 3

So the original thesis is still solid. It's not playing out nearly to the degree we thought. What we're seeing is the DuraTrac takeover much more on that. I'm sorry, can you repeat your first part of the question? The push outside, so relative in talking to a lot of our customers and developers, there were several that talked, I can only put it in a phrase that was used to me as why go forward and finance a project today when I know it's 50 basis points cheaper if I wait for the back half.

Speaker 3

And I look, I don't claim to be an expert in project financing and I would think there's ways around that, in the finance community, but that was a phrase conveyed to me by a couple of developers over the last 3 months. I don't know honestly to what degree that's impacting things.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 7

Thanks so much guys. You've offered a lot of details, so I appreciate that. But I'm just curious embedded in the guidance for this year, can you talk about the product mix and how that's trending? You're just alluding to it, but I'm just curious what the assumptions are underlying that in terms of some of the newer products versus older products and kind of larger versus smaller systems?

Speaker 3

Yes. I don't think we give that level of detail to be honest. I would only say that the product mix as anticipated vis a vis the OmniTrak is on track and the comment I'll make about the DuraTrac winning more against certain competitors versus the H250 in the near term.

Speaker 7

Okay. And then just in R and D spending, is there an expected change in terms of how much you're going to spend on the OpEx side Looking at new products now that it feels like you've got a pretty full portfolio here, should we see that moderate a little bit?

Speaker 3

No, you're actually going to see that accelerate. We feel really good about the changes we've made to our engineering organization over the last 2 years. And it's my commitment to the engineering organization that if they continue to bring forward really viable products with great margin enhancements and this includes new software, this includes new additional services. The amount of work we're doing on say accessories and clamping solutions and things like that and value added engineering efforts is very substantial at this point. So we're going to continue to accelerate and spend and I think we're getting a phenomenal return out of that.

Speaker 3

And again, we talked earlier last year on a call relative to the amount of patents. I think we're now up to nearly 120 patents that have been granted in the last 2 years, which again is more than the previous 18 years combined. So you're just going to continue to see us build that mode around our business with technology and patents and continue to build that out as we go forward.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kashy Harrison with Piper Sandler. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 11

Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for taking my question my questions, I should say. So my first set are on the U. S. Pipeline growth and conversion. You talked about a 3x growth in the U.

Speaker 11

S. Pipeline between 2Q 2023 and 4Q 2023. And I just want to clarify, so are you saying that the growth is mainly due to cost reductions in DuraTrac or is it H250 or is it OmniTrac? And then you said your win rate has gone up recently. Is that compared to early 2023, 2022, 2021?

Speaker 11

And then finally, how should we think about pipeline conversion into orders, the timeline?

Speaker 3

Yes, great questions, Kashy. So when I think about win rate, what I'm comparing it to is our baseline win rate is think about it as our historical domestic market share, right? So think of it that way. So if our win rate was just simply equal to our historic market share, obviously, the underlying assumption is that we're seeing most projects that are out there in the market, which is not entirely true, but largely accurate, I would say. So what we try to do is we look at that win rate accelerating above that.

Speaker 3

And that tells us that there's market share takeaway happening, right, above that historical market share rate. And that's what we're beginning to see now. We've seen that consistently for several months. So we feel really good about the fact that our reduced pricing in the market from those structural activities is really holding. And again, and I said, as I've gone out and met with many of our customers, they're really focused on I have one large EPC come to see me here in Chandler and the entire point of the meeting was please tell me that this is structural in nature and you're not trying to buy business because at these prices I can lock in a lot of work going forward, right?

Speaker 3

And that was a great conversation. We walked that customer through in detail the amount of work we're doing to reduce the costs for them and it was very satisfying meeting on both our sides. So I can tell you that. So again, relative to the pipeline, that pipeline is made up of a strong mix of OmniTrak, DuraTract and H250. That's all I can say on that.

Speaker 3

It's all of the above is sitting in that pipeline at this point.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Percoco with Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 12

Hey, thanks for taking the question. Maybe just as a follow-up to some of the margin questions earlier. You're kind of alluding to some declining ASPs this year. Some of that's being offset by lower commodity prices, lower manufacturing costs potentially. But I was just curious how much additional room do you have left to lower the cost of your product from here?

Speaker 12

If you were to take a 12 to 24 month view and pricing continues to come down, whether that's competition driven or otherwise, how much cost per watt if you want to use that measure, how much left or how much further can you drive down that metric versus where you are today?

Speaker 4

I would say a couple of things. This is Kurt. 1, the R and D spend that Kevin spoke about earlier isn't only for new product introductions. We're constantly designing for how we can reduce cost out of our program as well. And also obviously getting smarter in the supply chain side around how we price logistics in and redesign clamps and other things like that to optimize.

Speaker 4

And then obviously there's each EPC or developer does things a little bit differently. So we work with them if they have volume with us to make sure we're optimizing to make sure not just our product, but the residual balance of system costs and overall LCOE is taken into effect as well. There could be some instances where our price is a little bit higher because we're driving value on the back end where they reduce cost there. So I think we continue to have room. We will continue to design cost out.

Speaker 4

H250 is another example. It is a lower cost product of the DuraTrac. We have the ability to use that product if the price points get down to that level and still maintain our margin. So we will continue to focus on that. I will say our operations team has done a phenomenal job in executing the cost reduction goals that we had in 2023 and is a big reason of why we're sitting in the mid-20s margin without any 45x or other benefits included in there at the time.

Speaker 4

So I think there's still headway and every company will do that. You have to match that and I think you're seeing that across the industry. And we're committed to lowering the cost of solar energy globally.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Derek Soderbergh with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 11

Yes. Hey, thanks squeezing me in. Just one for me. I was curious if you could just talk a bit more about non tracker revenue opportunities. Any plans or introductions this year?

Speaker 11

Did non tracker play into the gross margin guidance? If so, to what degree? Just any call outs on the product development side there, how we should think about non tracker revenue trends in 2024? Thanks.

Speaker 4

I'll start, Kevin, and maybe you can add on if you haven't. I think, look, we've made some good progress on there. Again, I'll talk about the structural enhancements starting with Q4. If you take the 45x, which was $9,300,000 and we said we had $8,500,000 of one time charge. So they net each other out.

Speaker 4

Then that gives us 5 20 basis points year over year. About 3 quarters of that was coming from structural cost enhancements that Kevin talked about and the remaining 25% was coming from these non tracker revenue sources that we have. We expect that to continue to grow in the year, probably not a very material amount above what you're seeing here, but that therein lies a potential tailwind we have going out for promoting it, but it is factored into our guidance.

Speaker 3

And just adding some color to what those entail, there's kind of 3 major buckets we've been focusing on. The one is accredited training programs. As in order to qualify for the ITC and domestic content provisions, you have to be able to demonstrate you're using accredited training programs. And there's really a lack of them out there in the industry. So as our customers, as those EPCs are hiring labor to handle future acceleration, they need to be able to have that labor set for accredited training.

Speaker 3

So we've taken the time to create many training modules and get them fully accredited and that's already up and running at this point. And again, as on the front of customers, even as recent as 2 weeks ago, they're thrilled that there is another resource where they can send people for this accredited training. That second process processing our services if you will and taking some of the things that we do in terms of commissioning, Golden Row inspection, health assessment inspection services, site optimization services, all of those things that we do from time to time and productizing them so that they're highly repeatable and that we actually generate revenue for them. And again, that's really good high value revenue for us. And then the last is really comes down to project management and looking at where we can in source engineering services that maybe some of our customers are doing from time to time.

Speaker 3

And for example, the civil engineering terrain analysis that would be required to use Omni, bringing some of those services in house and being able to provide that value added for our customers. So we're really excited about that. We're really excited about the team we've built around our services offerings and we do expect that to continue to grow.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Dylan Nossino with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 13

Yes. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Sorry if this is already covered, but I just wanted to go back to the $300,000,000 that you guys talked about last quarter as being on the sidelines. I guess what I'm trying to understand is what is the churn?

Speaker 13

Was any of that included in this quarter's bookings? And just generally what is the churn in those kind of delayed projects? Thanks.

Speaker 3

What we saw is about half of that came into the order book. At this point, these are projects that they could just no longer delay. They need to get the orders to us for us to begin working with our supply chain. So we did see about half of that $300,000,000 that were on the sidelines specifically related to IRA clarity come in. I think the rest will just roll in project by project normal course of business.

Speaker 3

We won't really call it out with any specificity as we go forward. But about half of that is already converted now.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of Philip Shen with Roth Capital Partners. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 6

Kevin, Kurt, thanks for taking my questions. Can you quantify how much of the 45x you might pass along to customers? And when the IRA first came out, you guys quantified the Tortue credit being roughly $0.016 a watt. The torque tube guy might get maybe a 3rd or a quarter. Do you think you pass along as much of as a quarter or a third to customers and you guys keep maybe a third or half of it?

Speaker 6

And did you pass any along in the 40 sorry, did you pass some of the 45x credit with the recent $600,000,000 in bookings in Q4? Or if not, when do you expect to start to pass some of the 45x credit along to customers? Thanks.

Speaker 3

Phil, our margin guidance assumes that there will be a portion. So what we've been clear in our messaging is that that low 30s margin is net of the retained portion our 45x credit. We have not entered into any specific contracts requiring us to do that as of yet. But our view when we've been working with our customers and certainly our large partners, we've committed to them that there would be a level of sharing of that credit as we go forward. So we're not about to negotiate that over an open conference call.

Speaker 3

But our expectation and what's baked into our guidance is an expectation that there'll be a portion of that that we're going to share with our customers going forward.

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Vikram Bagri with Citi. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 14

Good afternoon, everyone. I think in the prepared comments, you had mentioned that you're evaluating multiple avenues to gain clarity on structural fasteners. Can you talk about what avenues you're evaluating and anticipated timing of clarity? The common period for 45x clarification expired mid Feb, but I believe you did not see clarity through that process. And on the same topic, the $40,000,000 of 2023 IRA credit realized in 20 earned in 2023 to be realized in 2024, is that a one time boost to this year's EBITDA or we may see a similar amount of IRA credits from 'twenty four to 'twenty five?

Speaker 14

I'm just trying to understand what is the right EBITDA excluding any one time boost or one time items that I should use for 2024. Is this $40,000,000 shift from 20 to 24, is it one time or we'll see 2024 also at the end of 2024, a similar amount shifting from 24 to 25? Thank you.

Speaker 4

I'll take the second part first, Kevin, and then maybe you can go on to the first part. On the second part regarding the one time nature, we think it's one, you didn't have all of the 45x negotiated at including the structural fasteners that we know will be included going in. There's parts that are a little bit more vague that we're waiting for clarity on. So I think at least for what we know now, you're probably safe that you have an equal amount push to the following year. And that amount will provide a little bit more clarity as we go throughout the year and we provide 2025 guidance.

Speaker 4

But from what we know now, that's what I tell you at that point. And I think what we're focusing on is the structural margin in the mid-twenty percent range

Speaker 3

on the core. And I'll address your comments on structural fastener. So, specifically some of the things we're doing. So first of all, I'm really thrilled that at the end of the year we increased our government affairs team and hired a new SVP of external policy and government affairs. And Jessica is really having a great impact working with us and being able to navigate some of these challenges around Washington DC.

Speaker 3

So setting that aside, we are active in working with providing additional clarity to the IRS in terms of additional variations of definitions around structural fasteners for 1. We're certainly active in a broader political push to ensure that the structural fastener elements as is are further supported. And I think for us there's kind of 2 categories we're focused on. The first are the amount of parts that we are already today very confident to qualify for credits based on the current guidelines as written. And our focus there isn't about changing the definition.

Speaker 3

It's really about negotiating with our parts suppliers in terms of the split. Much like we did at the end of the year into early this year with our torque tube suppliers, we're in those same negotiations with our suppliers in hopes of retaining a disproportionate amount of that benefit as well. So once we do that, once we have clarity, we've committed to come back to the market and give you guys an idea of what the size of that bread box really is. The second is a little bit more nebulous. It's a bunch of parts that may qualify.

Speaker 3

And the efforts we're doing there is we've hired some third party engineering companies to go and evaluate those parts and the definitions and give us rendered opinions on whether or not Part A or B or C would actually qualify under that definition. But again, we'll then take that on board once we get the rest of that audio analytics done. And as a management team, we'll decide whether or not we feel confident enough to take some additional elements of structural faster. So there's a lot of work going on around that. Again, we'll maintain our commitment to come back to you when we have full clarity and disclose that.

Speaker 3

But what I will say is that's again upside to the guidance we've currently provided.

Operator

Thank you. We have reached the end of our question and answer session. And with that, this concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.

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Earnings Conference Call
Array Technologies Q4 2023
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