SunPower Corporation (Nasdaq: SPWR) today announced financial results for Q407 that included a 4.3% decrease in revenue from Q3, but a year-to-year increase of 201%.
According to the company, revenue for Q407 was $224.3 million, down 4.3% from prior-quarter revenue of $234.3 million and up from year-ago Q4 revenue of $74.5 million.
The Components segment accounted for $100.4 million of Q4 revenue, a 31.1% increase from prior-quarter revenue of $76.6 million, the company says. The Systems segment accounted for $123.9 million of Q4 revenue, a 21.4% decrease from prior- quarter revenue of $157.7 million.
SunPower says Q307 revenue was significantly influenced by large scheduled project installations, particularly the Nellis Air Force Base project. 2007 Q4 growth, compared to the fourth quarter of 2006, was primarily driven by continued strong demand for SunPower products and systems across market segments and channels. For reporting purposes, the Systems segment generally represents products and services sold directly to the system owner, while the components segment represents primarily products sold to installers and resellers, according to the company. Additionally, both SunPower and third-party solar panels sold through the Systems segment channels are recorded as Systems segment revenue.
"SunPower achieved record operating results again in the fourth quarter of 2007," said Tom Werner, SunPower’s CEO. "SunPower’s investments in channel development, brand building, technology, and people yielded great results this quarter. We have purposefully chosen to vertically integrate and build a portfolio of customer segments, channels and applications to leverage our proprietary high-performance solar technology. Our brand and technology platforms improve our response time to new market opportunities and limit our individual market risk. Upstream we have also followed a portfolio strategy, developing a diversified set of silicon suppliers from polysilicon to ingots and wafers. We believe that our scale and flexibility places SunPower on the leading edge of the cost reduction roadmap as we address a rapidly evolving market.
"The global solar market delivered strong, dynamic growth in 2007. In the latter part of 2008 and beyond, we expect our industry’s silicon feedstock to become more abundant, leading to lower solar panel prices which will redistribute the power and profit pools in the value chain. SunPower has been preparing for this development for the last two years by vertically integrating downstream. In that vein, earlier this month we closed the acquisition of Solar Solutions–now named SunPower Italia–an Italian systems integrator. The investment in Italy and channel development in Southern Europe is aligned with SunPower’s vertically integrated model, our portfolio approach to customer market segments and our global geographic reach. We welcome SunPower Italia to our team.
"Technology advantages also position SunPower as a cost reduction leader among silicon-based solar companies. We are making steady progress on our plan to reduce installed system costs by 50% from 2006 levels by year- end 2012.
"We expect SunPower’s median solar cell efficiency to increase over the course of 2008 as we add five more Gen 2 lines in Fab 2. Our Fab 2 expansion will nearly double our nameplate solar cell manufacturing capacity from 214 megawatts (MW) at the end of 2007 to 414 MW at the end 2008.
"In panel manufacturing, we have started production on two more solar panel manufacturing lines and began ramping a third at the end of Q4, all of which are automated and contribute to scale economies. These lines will manufacture our larger-format, 96-cell solar panels which have achieved the highest rated solar panel efficiency ever measured, at more than 20%.
"With our strong finish in 2007, we are raising our guidance for the fiscal year 2008 and expect the following non-GAAP results: Total revenue of $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion and diluted net income per share of $2.00 to $2.10," continued Werner.
About SunPower
SunPower Corporation designs, manufactures and delivers solar-electric systems worldwide for residential, commercial and utility-scale power plant customers. With headquarters in San Jose, Calif., SunPower has offices in North America, Europe and Asia. SunPower is a majority-owned subsidiary of Cypress Semiconductor Corp. (NYSE: CY – News).
Loading...