Shoals Technologies Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:SHLS) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Dominic Bardos: Phil, there is a few things that we just have to be cautious. As Brandon mentioned, this is active litigation, we do need to be careful about what we say. But in terms of how this plays out, as I mentioned earlier and with Brian’s question, we do believe that there will be — this will take multiple quarters to resolve. We hope to be very forthcoming as solutions come forward from Prysmian. If there is something that comes forward there, as I mentioned — as we mentioned before, that there was no offsetting recovery booked in our financials at this point in time. So in terms of how we pay for it, we have cash from operations. I have got the full revolver. As we noted, we paid down the revolver in full. There is a $150 million of liquidity available to us there.

We continue to generate strong cash flows. And so from what we show on our balance sheet from a current portion of the liability, we feel confident in our ability to handle all that through operations.

Philip Shen: Shifting over to capacity. I think this is maybe the first time you talked about capacity in megawatts, sorry if I missed that earlier. But it seems like you are going from 20 gigawatts to call it 35. And I was wondering what you thought the utilization on that 35 might be through 2024. Do you expect to be at a high utilization rate and what might dictate and be the catalyst to expand beyond the 35 to the overall 42? Thanks.

Brandon Moss: We won’t guide on ’24 specifically. We are excited that we have added 15 gigawatts in 2023. And as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we can scale that up to 42 in our current footprint. What is probably most exciting for me is because we are not only adding capacity we are becoming more efficient. The conference room I am sitting in right now, I am looking out on a plant floor and each and every day we are getting more efficient in our ability to produce, our harnesses, our BLA product, and the facility is getting safer and safer each day. So I am excited about how the operations team is executing. We continue to invest in this business. We will continue to do that in years to come. But we are set for capacity probably through 2025, as I noted in my remarks.

Operator: Your next question comes from Jordan Levy from Truist Securities.

Unidentified Analyst: This is actually [indiscernible] on for Jordan. Thanks for taking my questions. So could you please maybe talk about the initial reception to your Snapshot product offering? And what this means for future product extensions into your gateway family products? And I’ve a follow-up.

Brandon Moss: Look, Snapshot, it’s very early days for that product, really launched at [Indiscernible] this year. The feedback that we got at [Indiscernible] for that particular product was amazing. And we have been out since [Indiscernible] taking that product to investors and owners and the feedback that we’ve got from them has been very, very strong. Again, it is early days, it is a new product for us, it gets us into the monitoring space. I think most exciting about the product is it opens up market opportunity for us to sell something into a solar plant that has already been constructed and we’ve never had a product like that before. So this opens some windows for us, it opens windows to the monitoring world. And I think we can continue to expand off of that as a product suite. So early days again, but very excited.

Unidentified Analyst: So second question real quick. So on your capital allocation, I mean, you paid down your revolver this quarter. So now how are you thinking about your M&A strategy in the current market? And are there any like natural extensions to EBOS getaway products that makes sense like conceptually? Thanks.

Dominic Bardos: Yes, as we’ve said before, we are very interested in driving growth organically as well as looking at inorganic growth. With the cash flow characteristics that we have as an organization in the base business, we very feel very confident in our ability to continue to drive strong cash flow margins. In terms of how we look at that, strategically, we are always evaluating opportunities. When we’re ready to make those announcements for you, we absolutely will. But at this point in time, we’re focusing on within, focusing on our organic growth as we’ve kind of laid out. And think in the first quarter when Brandon’s ready to talk about strategy update and then Analyst Day sort of thing, then that’s when we’ll start talking about what might be out on the horizon. But thank you for that.

Operator: And your next question comes [indiscernible] from [BNP]. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst: Just following-up on the backlog questions, rising quite nicely, there’s that international portion. Any ability to share book to bill for US EBOS specifically? And is there any material EV charging bookings in there?

Dominic Bardos: We haven’t broken down, the exact book to bill between domestic and international. That’s something that, as we said, 10% of the backlog and awarded orders is currently at that point. I imagine that percentage will climb if the lead times of those international projects are longer. And that’s why I alluded to in my prepared remarks, because I wanted everyone to understand that the kind of the revenue cycle that we’ve talked about historically may be lengthening and shifting as we continue to build that international business. But as Brandon mentioned, I echo the enthusiasm for the strong strength of our pipeline, the quoting activity, both domestic and international. And I’m glad to see international taking a larger piece. We just haven’t broken it down specifically but we’ll keep that in mind for next year.

Unidentified Analyst: And any [Technical Difficulty] where market share is today on BLA sort of a metric that was quoted in the past, just curious if you have a view.

Brandon Moss: As far as BLA goes, we have had fantastic penetration of that product. I mean, since IPO, we’ve 10x our share of EPCs that are using that solution. And at this time, we’re not going to speak specifically to market share or market share of a particular product. But we are excited about that product. And I think there’s still room for it to grow, there’s still new EPCs that we can target and there’s also deeper penetration within the current EPCs that we’re doing business with. As far as market share goes, as we’ve talked about in the past, there’s historical volatility in those market share estimates that’s caused by really some definitional issues across industry data providers. So not going to speak to market share specifically at this time. But again, reiterate that our plan is to grow faster than the marketplace.

Unidentified Analyst: And I guess just one more quickly on the manufacturing capacity of 35 gigawatts. Just to clarify, is that to produce BLA plus or is that a blend across BLA in the traditional home run?