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Q4 2024 Sunrun Inc Earnings Call

In This Article:

Participants

Patrick Jobin; Senior Vice President, Deputy CFO and Investor Relations and Investor Relations; Sunrun Inc

Mary Powell; Chief Executive Officer, Director; Sunrun Inc

Danny Abajian; Chief Financial Officer; Sunrun Inc

Paul Dickson; Chief Revenue Officer, President; Sunrun Inc

Praneeth Satish; Analyst; Wells Fargo Securities, LLC

Philip Shen; Analyst; Roth Capital Partners, LLC

Maheep Mandloi; Analyst; Mizuho Securities USA LLC

Colin Rusch; Analyst; Oppenheimer & Co. Inc

Dylan Nassano; Analyst; Wolfe Research

Tyler Bisset; Analyst; Goldman Sachs

Tim Moore; Analyst; Clear Street

Vikram Bagri; Analyst; Citi

Presentation

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to Sunrun's fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 earnings conference call. Please note that this call is being recorded and that 1 hour has been allocated for the call, including the Q&A session. (Operator Instructions)
I will now turn the call over to Patrick Jobin, Sunrun's Investor Relations Officer.

Patrick Jobin

Thank you, operator. Before we begin, please note that certain remarks we will make on this call constitute forward-looking statements. Though we believe these statements reflect our best judgment based on factors currently known to us. Actual results may differ materially and adversely.
Please refer to the company's filings with the SEC for a more inclusive discussion of risks and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ from projections made in any forward-looking statements. Please note that these statements are being made as of today, and we disclaim any obligation to update or revise them.
On the call today are Mary Powell, Sunrun's CEO; Danny Abajian, Sunrun's CFO; and Paul Dickson, Sunrun's President and Chief Revenue Officer. The presentation is available on Sunrun's Investor Relations website along with supplemental materials.
An audio replay of today's call, along with a copy of today's prepared remarks and transcript, including Q&A, will be posted to Sunrun's Investor Relations website shortly after the call. We've allocated 60 minutes from today's call, including the question-and-answer session.
And now, let me turn the call over to Mary.

Mary Powell

Thank you, Patrick, and thank all of you for joining us today. The fourth quarter was an exceptionally strong quarter for Sunrun, and our execution positioned us well for 2025. We are delivering high-quality growth, generating meaningful cash, increasing our book value of deployed systems, and paying down our parent debt. We are poised to further improve our operating and financial results and deliver a very strong 2025 with meaningful cash generation.
In 2024, we adapted to the rapid increase in interest rates, innovated through changes in state regulations, built a robust supply chain with strong domestic content focus, and remained steadfast in the face of irrational behavior from several industry participants.
We are improving in every dimension, focusing on fast, effective execution, delivering strong financial and operating results, gaining share in a disciplined way, and building a long-term foundation of valuable grid resources. Executing on our plan does not require equity funding.
In 2024, we optimized our product mix, prioritize the highest value geographies and routes to market with an intense focus on cost efficiency. At the same time, we increase storage attachment rates, resulting in the highest net subscriber values Sunrun has ever reported.
We have now posted positive cash generation for three consecutive quarters and expect to do so in every quarter throughout 2025, including the first quarter which is seasonally the weakest. We have allocated excess cash to pay down our parent debt by $186 million since Q1 of last year, while making strategic long-term investments in AI to lower costs, streamline operations and create a differentiated customer experience.
We also allocated excess cash to execute our end of year safe harbor equipment purchases to mitigate what we view as unlikely, but still potential policy changes. The fundamental long-term demand drivers for our business are incredibly strong and unrelated to any political party affiliation.
Americans want greater energy independence and control of their lives and their pocketbooks. The country also needs more power from all sources to fuel rapid growth in electrification and data centers, and our growing fleet of energy resources will be part of that solution. For these reasons, it is no surprise that support for the energy we provide spans across all party lines.
Turning to more specifics for the quarter. In Q4, we grew contracted total value generated or the aggregate net contracted value of systems installed in the quarter using capital costs observed in Q4 by 125% compared to the prior year and just 48% compared to the prior quarter.
We did this by growing our customer editions sequentially and by increasing subscriber values from higher battery attachment rates and ITC realization while holding our creation costs flat. Cash generation was $34 million in the quarter. We elected to invest $18 million of working capital in safe harbor equipment, which obviously lowered our cash generation results in the quarter.
In Q4, we also hit all-time highs for storage attachment rates and capacity installed. We installed storage for 62% of our new customers, an increase of 17 percentage points from a year ago. We installed 392 megawatt hours of storage in Q4, up 78% from a year ago. Our fleet of network storage capacity has reached 2.5 gigawatt hours with over 156,000 storage systems installed. We continue to advance programs that generate value for customers, the grid and Sunrun.
We have 16 grid service programs active across the country, with over 20,000 customers participating. During 2024, Sunrun's virtual power plants successfully supported power grids across the country with a combined instantaneous peak of nearly 80 megawatts, a capacity greater than many traditional fossil fuel power plants.
Sunrun is leading in establishing a platform to turn homes and vehicles into smart controllable load that can be dispatched into and improve the electric grid. I want to spend a minute on what we're seeing in recent industry data. We don't manage to market share. We view our leading position in the industry as a natural long-term result of pursuing a customer first disciplined growth strategy.
There have been periods where there are irrational competitive behavior, such as pricing and terms loan providers offered a few years ago, and more recently price being offered by certain financing only new entrants. But our view is that a focus on the fundamentals and first-rate execution always prevails in the long term.
We lead with the best possible customer experience, underwrite healthy and financially sound business and grow in a sustainable strategic way. We have seen some new entrants become more rational in recent periods, while others continue to scale with uneconomic cash-consuming activities.
We have seen our share of residential storage installations expand to over 50% in the US, while residential solar installations nationwide picked up significantly in the last few quarters, from 13% in Q1 to 19% in Q4. I'm pleased to see these trends, but I'm more pleased that we are doing it in a way that is consistently generating cash and delighting our customers.
Sunrun is well positioned to drive meaningful value for shareholders in 2025 and beyond. The grid continues to become less reliable and more expensive. Consumers are demanding more energy independence and choice, and technology advancements continue to unlock more opportunities.
Our primary focus is furthering our differentiation. Launching additional products and services to expand customer lifetime values and remaining the disciplined, margin and customer-focused industry leader, growing cash generation in the business for years to come.
I know we are living in uncertain times, and no one can predict the future perfectly, but what we can do is continue building an incredibly resilient and efficient organization that can pivot and respond to whatever is thrown at it.
I recall just a few years ago, investors were skeptical because Sunrun had negative cash generation and was facing large regulatory changes in California, massive increases in interest rates and a challenging supply chain.
Sunrun not only managed to adapt to these pressures but has now started to generate significant cash on a recurring basis with higher rates while operating under [NIM 3] and navigating the various supply chain dynamics. This is the team that knows how to focus on first rate execution and lead this industry.
Before handing it over to Danny, I want to take a moment to share how Sunrun employees responded during the devastating Los Angeles wildfires in January. As soon as high winds and wildfire threats emerged, our team initiated our planned response to support customers and employees.
In an emergency like this, the homes we serve become critical infrastructure in impacted communities, supporting both our customers and the communities they live in. Batteries were automatically adjusted to maximize backup power ahead of widespread blackouts.
When I visited our Los Angeles teams and customers during that time, I heard numerous stories of how Sunrun customer homes provided essential power and a safe haven for so many who are impacted by this tragedy.
These events highlight the urgent need to more safely generate and deliver energy to customers and to have on-site power generation and storage systems providing critical power during those emergencies. Demand for our storage offering remains robust following this event.
With that, let me turn the call over to Danny for our financial update.