After a steep decline in inverter shipments in the last quarter of 2023, Solaredge has started the first quarter of 2024 with an increase to 946MW.
Although still nearly a fourfold decrease from Q1 2023, when the solar inverter supplier shipped 3.6GW, it improves on the 901MW shipped in Q4 2023.
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In terms of regions, both Europe (443MW in Q1 24) and the rest of the world (276MW) have increased their shipments from the previous quarter, as shown in the chart below. On the other hand, the US continues to decrease from the previous quarter with 226MW of inverters shipped during Q1 2024.
The residential market continues to tumble for a third month in a row with 302MW of inverters shipped during Q1 2024. In the US residential market the company did not expect any significant changes due to interest rates and electricity prices continuing at the same levels, said Zvi Lando, CEO at Solaredge.
Uptake in single phase batteries in the US
Where the company did notice a continued uptake was in its single phase battery product in the US market and more particularly in California – due to the adoption of batteries tied to NEM3.0 as covered by our sister-site Energy.storage-news – and in Puerto Rico. Despite that uptake, SolarEdge batteries shipped in Q1 2024 are down from the previous quarter from 133MWh to 128MWh.
Moreover, sell-through in the US commercial market was down 22% after a record Q4 2023, due to seasonality, according to Lando. “We are encouraged by the trajectory of this market, which is expected to grow this year due, among other reasons, to the continued demand from large enterprise customers who want to standardise their global portfolios on our product,” added Lando.
In terms of production capacity, Lando said the company manufactured around 250MW of single phase inverters at its Austin, Texas facility in Q1 2024 and is on track to reach 500MW of manufacturing capacity in Q2 2024. During the second quarter the company expects to start shipping optimisers and commercial inverters at its second US facility, located in Florida.
In Europe, Lando highlighted a slow down in activity due to a longer winter than usual and with recent regulatory changes still being processed. With the decline of electricity prices in several markets, including Germany negatively affecting the “economics of solar”, Lando expects improvements in the coming months with the recent passing of the Solar Package I by the German Parliament.
Overall, the solar inverter supplier expects sell-through of inverters to be up 15-20% in Q2 2024 compared with Q1 2024.
“As we enter spring when installations historically tend to rise, we expect channel inventory to continue to decline and revenues to improve. In parallel, we are focused on a suite of new products that we plan to release in the next several quarters to position ourselves for the next growth cycle in our industry,” said Lando.
Downward revenues in Q1 2024
For the third quarter in a row, revenues were down in Q1 2024, with overall revenues reached US$204 million, of which US$190 million from its solar business. This is a 34% drop from the previous quarter when revenues registered were at US$316 million (US$282.4 million for the solar business) in Q4 2023.
Even though revenues have decreased on a quarterly basis, spending on research and development remained steady in Q1 2024 with US$75.4 million, slightly up from US$75 million in Q4 2023.
In its guidance for Q2 2024, Solaredge targets revenues to be within the range of US$250-280 million, with the solar business revenue to be between US$225-255 million.
Earnings call transcript from Seeking Alpha.
