SolarEdge Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SEDG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Unidentified Analyst: This is Miguel on for Brian. Yes, first question is, now that you’ve got Sella 2 up and running, you mentioned Sella 2 has 1,000 basis points of higher margin than Samsung SDI. So two questions here. How should we think about the battery mix from Samsung versus Sella 2 going forward? And then when do you expect to realize the 1,000 basis points in margin?

Zvi Lando : So in general, first of all, we need to remember that today we have two sources of batteries that are going into our sales of residential batteries. One is Samsung and the other one is a player that we cannot disclose. And as I’ve mentioned, I think in the past, we are going to see a situation where we’re going to have a combination of at least Sella 2 sales and maybe one of the others that will continue to serve our batteries. So actually, you will see a mixed result here. Now when it comes to overall batteries coming from — based on Sella 2, this will come towards the end of the year because not only we need to stabilize and ramp Sella 2, we also need to remember that usually making a battery on a different cell requires the development of the whole new battery, which is a little bit different, and this is a process that our R&D in the solar segment is going through this year.

In general, the way that we see it is that we will start to see Sella 2-based batteries arriving to the market in late 2023. And that means that until that time, we will basically continue to have both Samsung and the other player battery coming. And that means that also the gross margin improvement that we expect to see on Sella 2 coming will happen towards the end of the year. There is one last thing that is important also to mention, and this is actually what is going to be the price environment because gross margin is always a combination of the cost but also the selling price. And we believe that, as we said in the past, battery prices at a certain time will have to be adjusted most likely downwards over time. So I think that, again, when we’re looking at gross margins for batteries, solar batteries for the long term, we should look at the 25% target where even once you will have Sella 2 batteries maybe we, together, by the way, with competition that we see out there, we’ll have to adjust the prices down.

Unidentified Analyst: Okay. I appreciate all that color. And then last question for me, and I’ll pass it on. The gross margin target long term of, I think, 29% to 31% as outlined in the Analyst Day, you guys are already ahead of that long-term target. So what are the puts and takes on where margins could get to in 2023, given what we think is presumably more upside from freight cost savings and also battery margins improving. Just hoping if you could walk us through that as well.

Ronen Faier : So I think here, the main factor is going to be actually the mix of batteries within the overall product mix. In general, all of the phenomena that you have mentioned together, by the way, as I said in my prepared remarks, that we have not yet fully, I would say, enjoyed all of the benefits that we can get from lowering shipment expenses as a percentage of revenues are due to continued income in Q1 and to a higher extent in Q2 once the impact of Chinese New Year and additional manufacturing capacity will come online. Same note, this is also the time when we expect to start to see batteries taking a bigger chunk of our mix in the overall revenues. And that means that this will push the gross margins down. We do believe that the numbers that we see today may have a little bit of an upside to what we guided as the long-term target in our Analyst Day, which was, as you mentioned, 20% to 31%.