SunPower reported its Q2’18 financial results today and released information on its panel manufacturing and acquisition of SolarWorld.
The company reported a 45% year-over-year volume growth within distributed generation (DG), and its U.S. residential business is up 15%. SunPower is also feeling more positive after its agreement for Enphase to purchase SunPower’s microinverter business for $25 million and 7.5 million shares of Enphase common stock.
“Strong customer demand in our global DG business, combined with our continuing cost control initiatives, enabled us to exceed our forecasts for the quarter,” said Tom Werner, SunPower CEO and chairman of the board. “We also made significant progress on our previously announced efforts to delever our balance sheet and simplify our business model with the monetization of our ownership stake in 8point3 Energy Partners and the planned sale of our microinverter assets to Enphase, as previously announced. Strategically, we remain committed to achieving sustainable profitability, scaling our NGT and improving cash flow.”
The company said that the ramp-up of its Next Generation Technology (NGT) solar cell and panel is working ahead of schedule, and as a result, SunPower will transition its existing interdigitated back contact (IBC) manufacturing capacity to NGT. SunPower had previously said that NGT is 40% cheaper than IBC to manufacture and still delivers high efficiency results. The company expects volume production by Q4’18.
SunPower also stated that it plans to manufacture its P-Series modules at the SolarWorld Americas plant in Oregon upon closing of the acquisition.
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