US residential solar power company Sunrun exited Q1/2022 with 27% annual growth in installations that added up to 213 MW, exceeding its guidance of between 195 MW to 200 MW, owing to strong demand leading the company to revise upward its 2022 deployment guidance (see Sunrun's Q4/2021 Financial Results).
Revenues of $495.8 million were up 48% from last year, contributed by $209.7 million customer agreements and incentives, and $286.1 million by solar energy systems and product sales. Yet, it still reported net loss of $-87.8 million, having widened from $-79 million in the previous quarter.
Management reported 39% annual increase in customer orders, outpacing installations leading to a growing backlog. CFO Tom vonReichbauer pointed out that though this ensures the company will have strong deployment growth, the 'mismatch between sales and installation activities creates a drag on reported financial performance'.
With the addition of around 29,500 new customers to its portfolio, including 22,000 subscriber additions, Sunrun counts its total customer tally as close to 690,000 comprising 589,000 subscribers. All in, it represents 4.9 GW of networked solar energy capacity that went up 21% compared to last year.
"Over the last month we successfully implemented meaningful pricing changes to offset higher material and capital costs, and continue to see very strong demand as utility rate inflation exceeds 11% across the country," said vonReichbauer. "Despite continuing to grow our backlog of customers, and the effects of Omicron early in the quarter, we generated sequentially higher Net Subscriber Values and expect margins to increase meaningfully throughout the year."
Guidance
In Q2/2022, it expects to register a sequential growth of 12% and over 25% annual increase at the midpoint to install between 235 MW to 245 MW solar energy capacity,
Sunrun had previously guided for its 2022 solar energy installations to grow by at least 20% annually, but going by the strong customer demand and its ability to meet the same the management has increased full year guidance to over 25% annual improvement in deployments.