Enphase Q1: Strong Momentum in First Quarter as Public Firm

Net revenues increased to $42.6 million from $18.1 million year-over-year; gross margin increased to 21.8 percent from 14.7 percent year-over-year.

Eric Wesoff May 10, 2012

Eric Wesoff

Editor-at-Large
Greentech Media

Eric Wesoff is Editor-at-Large at Greentech Media. Prior to joining GTM, Eric Wesoff founded Sage Marketing Partners in 2000 to provide sales and marketing-consulting services to venture-capital firms and their portfolio companies in the alternative energy and telecommunications sectors. Mr. Wesoff has become a well-known, respected authority and speaker in these fields.

His expertise covers solar power, fuel cells, biofuels and advanced batteries. His strengths are in market research and analysis, business development and due diligence for investors. He frequently consults for energy startups and Silicon Valley's premier venture capitalists.

Solar microinverter firm Enphase had its first earnings call today as a public company with a presentation covering its first quarter performance. In early April, Enphase completed its IPO, raising total gross proceeds of $61.9 million.

Paul Nahi, CEO, led the festivities. Here are the key takeaways:

Net revenues increased to $42.6 million from $18.1 million year-over-year. Revenues were down from the previous quarter, but Nahi observed that first quarters are typically soft quarters.
Gross margin increased to 21.8 percent from 14.7 percent year-over-year.
Units sold in Q1 of 2012 increased to 292,000, compared to 123,000 in the first quarter of 2011.
The company has over 42,000 installations to date.
Enphase has a nearly 30 percent market share in residential solar and 19 percent market share in small commercial in California, according to the CEO.

Nahi likened the move to microinverters as the shift from mainframes to personal computers.

Net loss for Q1 was $10.2 million.

Enphase Energy anticipates net revenues for the second quarter of 2012 in the range of $49 million to $52 million, and a gross margin in a range of 21.5 percent to 23.0 percent. The firm did not provide megawatt guidance and noted that the team has good visibility into the quarter.

Nahi was confident in the ability to grow market share. He also mentioned that he would comment on microinverter competitors as soon as the central inverter companies actually introduce a microinverter. Nahi acknowledged that Enphase was underrepresented in the third-party residential leasing sector but was improving its presence in that field.