Enphase Energy's President and CEO Badrinarayanan Kothandaraman has cautioned about supply constraints in the global semiconductor market that in turn constrained a few semiconductor components required by the company in Q4/2020 to produce its microinverters—ASIC for the microinveters and AC FET drivers for high-voltage FET to be specific.
While sharing this during a call with analysts, Kothandaraman said it is a 'manageable' situation compared to the component shortage it faced for high voltage AC FET in 2018 and 2019 (see Enphase Beat Q1/2019 Revenue Guidance). Enphase is now in the process of qualifying new suppliers to ease constraints into Q2/2021.
It is well positioned for the storage capacity though which it guides to grow to 120 MWh in Q3/2021, compared with 50 MWh in Q4/2020, the CEO added.
However, analysts at Roth Capital Partners think otherwise. "We do not believe there were any manufacturing capacity constraints, given that the company can produce 1mn units/quarter in Mexico, 0.5mn/quarter in India (expanding to 1mn/quarter in the next 6 months), and 2.5 mn/quarter in China, for 4.0mn units/quarter total vs. 2.3mn units shipped in Q4," said Philip Shen.
Q4/2020
Enphase's revenues in Q4/2020 were a total of $264.8 million with GAAP gross margin of 46% and net income of $73 million. "Strong demand for our microinverter systems across all regions continued in the fourth quarter of 2020, while shipments of our newly ramped Enphase Storage systems increased approximately 35% compared to the third quarter. We achieved record microinverter system sell-through from distributors to installers in the fourth quarter of 2020, resulting in lower than usual channel inventory as we exited the quarter," stated Enphase. It shipped close to 762 MW DC or 2,292,132 microinverters in the reporting quarter.
2020
Enphase grew its annual revenues for FY 2020 to over $774 million, compared to $624 million it reported for 2019, also increasing its gross margin to 44.7% (2019: 35.4%), but its net income of $134 million was a decline over $161 million the year before (see Enphase Energy: 2019 1st Full Year Of GAAP Profitability Ever).
Guidance
During Q1/2021, Enphase targets to report revenues in the range of $280 million to $300 million, excluding safe harbor shipments with GAAP gross margin of 37% to 40% and GAAP operating expenses within the range of $64 million to $67 million. The management said the gross margin guidance includes a further increase in shipping and logistics costs.
These estimates, it adds, includes its recent acquisition of Canada based residential solar software provider Sofdesk, but not the Solar Design Services business of India based proposal drawing and permit plan provider for North American residential solar installers, DIN Engineering Services LLP. Acquisition of the latter is likely to close by March 31, 2021.
Enphase said these acquisitions are expected to enhance the capabilities of its digital platform, simplifying sales process and improve buying experience for homeowners.
It also added that in India it will produce close to 400,000 microinverters in India in Q1/2021.