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Sunrun, having a good run over the last year, and the company reporting a milestone of reaching 1 million customers and industry first, but it's been an outlier in an industry that's struggled amid higher interest rates. Here to talk more about the solar industry is Mary Powell, Sunrun CEO. Mary, good to see you.

Good to see you.

So, let's talk about that milestone, Mary. Um, first clean energy company to surpass 1 million residential solar customers. Talk about that milestone, what it means for the company.

Oh my goodness. I mean, it's just it's remarkable when you think about it. I was a utility CEO before I took the helm of Sunrun, and, you know, I mean, it's we're larger than a lot, I mean, a lot of utilities in the United States of America. We're serving over a million households. So, that actually means we're serving probably 3 million Americans. And we're doing it now, not just with solar, but with storage. So, we used the last year and a half to pivot very hard to storage. So, we're doing storage, we called it a storage first strategy, where we're doing storage plus solar well over 50% of the time that we're bringing clean energy solutions to homes. So, we are like we're so excited. It was so fun today because we had customers come in from California, Texas, New York, and celebrate with us, and they talked about the amazing change. It's been in their lives to have solar plus storage.

It's such an interesting moment for the industry right now. You have incentives and sort of support from the government, but you have higher interest rates on the flip side that has been sort of a headwind for the industry, but on the flip side, you also have very high traditional electricity rates. So, that's been a motivator. So, how are you how does the industry sort of come out from these various cross currents?

Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, you're right. Like there were some interesting currents over the last couple of years. I would say the most powerful was the rapid rise in interest rates, and you know, Sunrun, what we did is what great companies do, which is we just like leaned right into the wind and said, we're going to come out stronger, the other side, and we have emerged stronger from basically every metric you could look at, and we've articulated that we are going to achieve our cash generation goals. We're going to generate cash next year. We've improved the customer experience. We've done a lot of things to really just hit the ground running as interest rates have now calmed down, right? The rise in interest rates have calmed down. Some are saying we're going to see a cut. Um, at the same time, you're right, the biggest tailwind, like fundamentally, the biggest tailwind is the fact that utility rates are doing nothing but rising at the same time that reliability is going down. So, cost is going up, the predictability and stability is going down. So again, customers tell me the customers that were here in New York, celebrating with us, were saying, you've made me feel more secure in my own home because I now have the independence that comes from generating and storing my own energy.

Let's talk about the competition too, Mary. You know, you're a lot bigger than Snova, but I talked to some analysts. Listen, they have been making up some ground. I'm just curious how you think about the broader competitive landscape.

You know, honestly, I I I love a healthy marketplace. So, I cheer for our competitors. Um, you know, the the total addressable market is massive, and we have really defined ourselves as the leader in storage plus solar, and really in being a clean energy lifestyle multi-product company. So, we also are providing EV chargers to some customers. We're providing smart electric panels. We were the first to join with the automotive industry with Ford with their F-150 lightning. We even did a a project in Maryland. We announced it about a few weeks ago, where we're backing up the grid using Ford F-150s that are charging homes. So, we are moving very fast into a multi-product space, meeting customers wherever they are on their clean energy journey, and we're rooting for others in the space because the total addressable market is really significant.

Well, on the flip side of, um, competitors that are thriving in the space, there's one competitor, SunPower, that is going to be, um, going out of business. Um, and you have alluded to sort of picking up some market share perhaps. So, can you quantify that opportunity? And also talk about how you meet that capacity wise?

Mhm. Yeah. So, SunPower did have some unique challenges unique to them, that didn't have to do with other industry headwinds we were just chatting about. I would say the most significant opportunity for Sunrun to grow further is in the new homes business. So, uh, Sunrun's been in the new homes business. We've had some very strong partnerships, but through the course of this change, we've had a number of folks reach out to us that want to that want to join Sunrun. We've had some builders reach out to us. And so, we're really we're really excited about the impact, um, that we can bring to those builders and to bringing more solar plus storage into the new home space.

Mary, it was great having you on set. Thanks for joining us.

Wonderful to chat with you. Thank you so much.