ReneSola Ltd (NYSE:SOL) Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Ke Chen: Yes. First of all, Amit, let me point out the business first. If you look at our revenues since 2020 and 2021 and now, you will see that U.S., Europe business will account for majority of our business, this quarter almost 80%. So that’s our strategic decision about three years ago, we continue to drive the business in this direction. So this is in line with our shareholder structure change to focus on the U.S. and the European market, which is the better market right now for renewable energy. And again, with Himanshu Shah become the Chairman, we are even more focused and clearly strategically driven shareholder value here. And also, we are, again, to make the requirement to exceed the requirement and also maybe, again, become a U.S. fiber peer going forward.

Amit Dayal: Understood. That’s all I have for now guys. I’ll take my other questions offline. Thank you.

Yumin Liu: Thank you, Amit.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Donovan Schafer from Northland Capital. Your question please.

Donovan Schafer: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. I’m sorry for some background noise. I’m at the airport right now. So the first question I have is just — so just to be clear for the kind of lower revenue outlook for the fourth quarter. It seems like you’re saying that was — it was not a matter of delays at a project level of push outs, but just it was a decision at the corporate level to retain them. So then there’s lower revenue recognition. And is this an incremental because you kind of hinted at this on the second quarter call, a desire to hold because of PPA pricing that made it more attractive to hold on to these assets. Was this an incremental kind of an additional tranche of assets you decided, hey, we’re going to hang on. Here’s an extra cluster of assets you want to hang on to in Poland and Hungary?

Yumin Liu: You are absolutely right, for two reasons, not only we see the demand in Europe and the PPA price going up, but also as we are so active in Europe, we want to be a local player operating the solar farms long term. Definitely, more importantly, the solar farms owning — the ownership as an IPP player in Europe give us tremendous great economic returns from those deals. So literally speaking, about six months ago the management decided not to sell those 110 megawatts in Q4 of this year and instead will keep all of them. So we do have this plan to build on in the next, I will say, 9 to 10 months. And the deals — the projects are under construction, some of them are under construction now and some are under financing now.

But in any case, this will add the stable cash flow and significant good returns to the company. And as I also mentioned earlier, that the return changing from the sale, NPP sale to IPP the payback is less than four years. And by the way, less than four years we already used a pretty conservative PPA price in merchant curve estimate in the Europe, not really counting those $300, $400, $500 per megawatt hour.

Ke Chen: Donovan, a lot of reason for lower revenue is because currency impact of weak euro. So I just want to point out that.

Donovan Schafer: Right, right, weak euro. Okay. And then I also wanted to ask if you’re seeing any kind of trends in some way kind of a follow-up on Phil’s question about for the projects you do take to COD and sell or NTP because, of course, those are still potentially parts of the strategy. I think NTP is favored to COD, but that could happen sometimes. So when you’re doing those sales, I tend to think of NTP as often being kind of in a range of $0.10, $0.20 a lot and COD sales often in the U.S. and Europe are typically around $1. But so much has been changing, so kind of just wanted to check-in on that. As you’ve been seeing and we’ve talked a lot about PPA prices, but have you been seeing significant changes or trends for the ASPs when you’re doing an NTP sale or you’re doing a COD sale? Kind of what’s — I just want to get kind of an update there.

Yumin Liu: I think you are

Donovan Schafer: And maybe you could — if you’re okay with sharing it, perhaps you could refer to the ASP you got on the Pennsylvania megawatts, if that’s all helpful? I know those were more sort of on the utility scale size. So maybe that’s lower traditionally, but I think that could be useful in ramp up.