After just last month announcing it would re-enter the U.S. panel manufacturing industry after acquiring SolarWorld Americas, SunPower stated in its Q1 earnings report that it plans to sell off its development pipeline to focus on manufacturing and the smaller distributed generation (DG) market.
“Operationally, our goal was to improve cash flow, delever the balance sheet, divest certain assets, reduce operating expenses and simplify our financial reporting,” said Tom Werner, SunPower CEO and chairman of the board, in the report. “As a result, we made the decision to sell our remaining power plant development assets, expand our global equipment sales business through our SunPower Solutions group and reallocate resources to our faster growing, higher margin global DG business. Additionally, we committed to investing in those areas that offer further differentiation and growth potential including our industry-leading cell and panel technology, our solar-plus-storage offerings, as well as our complete solutions product suite.”
SunPower expects to reach multi-gigawatt production of its P-Series modules by the end of the year. Once the SolarWorld acquisition is approved, cell and module manufacturing will begin to serve the North American market. SunPower also stated that interest in its Helix Storage solution, released two months ago, has remained strong as more DG projects have entered its pipeline this quarter.
“With the DG industry forecasted to grow by 40% over the next five years, our extensive product portfolio, solar-plus-storage offerings and a strong global power plant and rooftop channel strategy through SunPower Solutions, we believe the transition to our new business unit structure will position us to drive long-term, sustained financial success for our shareholders,” Werner said.
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