Vivint Solar's increased Q4 bookings, installations fail to lift operating losses

Share

Utah-headquartered Vivint Solar, one of the leading residential solar lease providers in the U.S., has published fourth quarter (Q4) and fiscal year 2015 financial results that reveal sizeable operating losses.

Although Q4 delivered increased bookings and MW installations, Vivint Solar’s loss from operations rose to $55.7 million in the quarter, up from $40 million for Q4 2014. The company’s business model of securing customers on long-term lease contracts means short-term losses are inevitable; operating leases and incentives revenue, for example, increased by 163% year-on-year to $15.5 million. This drove revenue to $16 million for the quarter, which represented a 134% increase on the $6.9 million revenue posted in Q4 2014.

However, the cost of revenue derived from these operating leases and incentives also increased to $36.4 million, up from $20.8 million a year prior.

Hence, with total operating expenses standing at $71.7 million (in Q4 2014 that figure was just $46.8 million), losses overall rose, burdened by a one-time case expense of $5.3 million in a transaction related to expenses, and a further stock-based compensation expense of $2.4 million.

Contracts and full year financials

Bookings for Q4 reached 80 MW, which was a 56% increase on last year and a reflection of a strong residential solar market. The number of solar installations carried out by Vivint Solar in Q4 was 8,411, a 23% increase on Q4 2014. The company ended the year with cumulative installations of 68,527, which amounts to 459 MW of installed capacity nationwide to date.

This growth ensured that nominal contract payments remaining reached $1.82 billion – an 82% increase year-on-year, with retained value rising to $906 million, which was another 80%-plus rise. Vivint Solar estimates its retained value per watt to be $1.98, with the cost per watt relatively flat at $3.12, up slightly from Q4 2014, when it stood at $2.96.

However, taken across the entire fiscal year, loss from operations rose to $231.1 million, up from $162.3 million in 2014. The recent termination of the merger and acquisition deal with SunEdison is unlikely to salve current operating expenses, which rose to $295.3 million last year, up distinctly from 2014’s $187.6 million.

Vivint Solar confirmed that yesterday it entered into a long-term $200 million loan facility in order to ease its initial debt burdens. The company said that it incurred $25 million in borrowings at closing, and will incur an additional $50 million in borrowings within 30 days.

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.

Popular content

Longi introduces 665 W HPBC photovoltaic modules

11 October 2024 The Chinese PV manufacturer said its new module series has a power conversion efficiency of up to 24.8% and temperature coefficient is -0.26% per C.

Share

Leave a Reply

Please be mindful of our community standards.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.

Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.

You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.

Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.