Array Technologies - Q3 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Greetings, and welcome to Array Technologies' Q3 2023 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Cody Mueller, Investor Relations at Array. Please go ahead.

Cody Mueller (SVP of Finance and Investor Relations)

Good evening, and thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Array Technologies' Q3 2023 results. Slides for today's presentation are available on the investor relations section of our website, arraytechinc.com. During this conference call, management will make forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from our forward-looking statements if any of our key assumptions are incorrect. We identify the principal risks and uncertainties that may affect our performance in our reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which can also be found on our investor relations website. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. Today's presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures.

You should refer to the information contained in the company's Q3 press release for definitional information and reconciliations of historical non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP financial measures. With that, let me turn the call over to Kevin Hostetler, Array Technologies' CEO.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Thanks, Cody, and welcome everyone. In addition to Cody, I'm also joined by Nipul Patel, our Chief Financial Officer. Before I start with the discussion on the quarter, I would like to first discuss our transition in the CFO position that we announced earlier today. Starting on November 13th, Kurt Wood will take over as the CFO of Array Technologies, replacing Nipul Patel. We are grateful that Nipul has agreed to stay on board in an advisory role until the end of the year to ensure that we have a smooth transition. We'd like to thank Nipul for his instrumental role in the success of Array. From leading the company through the IPO, to being a driving force behind the gross margin recovery and the improvements in our cash and liquidity position, we certainly would not be where we are today without Nipul.

The entire team at Array wishes him the best in his future endeavors. I am also extremely pleased to welcome Kurt Wood on board. Kurt brings an incredibly strong finance and operational background to Array that will be invaluable to us as we continue to grow and mature as a company. With that, let's move to slide three, where I'll provide some highlights from the quarter. Array once again delivered a strong performance against all of our key metrics. For the quarter, we delivered $350 million in revenue, which was in line with our expectations, and as Nipul will discuss more later, is inclusive of a roughly $20 million reduction for a year-to-date reclassification of Brazilian ICMS tax incentives.

This quarter, we also continued to over-deliver on our gross margin expectations, reporting 26% on an adjusted basis, which, combined with an increased expectation for Q4, has raised our full-year outlook on gross margin once again. It is important to point out this result does not include any benefit from the IRA's 45X manufacturing credits. On the strength of our margin performance, we recorded adjusted EBITDA of $57.4 million, which represented 16.4% of sales, an increase of 560 basis points from the same quarter last year.

I'm also happy to note that we delivered $69 million in free cash flow this quarter, bringing our year-to-date total to $126 million, which keeps us well on pace to our previously stated target of delivering between $150 million and $200 million of free cash flow in 2023. In the quarter, we also made a $50 million prepayment of our term loan, bringing the total principal balance down to $239 million. Finally, this quarter, I'll only spend a short amount of time talking about the overall demand landscape, as not much has changed since last quarter. As shown by a reduced revenue outlook, we have continued to be impacted by short-term project timing challenges that are outside of our control.

For instance, this quarter, we had several projects that experienced delays associated with financing, as developers are focused on renegotiating PPA rates to improve project returns in this higher interest rate environment. While we fully expect financing and continued delays related to permitting and other items to be sorted out in the near term, this is yet another complexity that we are working to understand with our customers. However, it's important to note that we have continued to execute on elements that we can control and have largely maintained our profitability and free cash flow expectations for the full year. As we look past some of these short-term project timing issues, I remain optimistic about the direction of our industry.

Remember, solar accounted for over 50% of all new electrical generating capacity added to the US grid at the start of this year, and there is no reason to believe this will slow down. It still represents the cheapest and fastest form of new energy generation. Also, utility-scale solar is not facing any structural demand weakness or destocking issues. Add to that, the fact that the tracker market is poised to well outpace the strong overall projected utility-scale solar growth over the next few years, and we still have many more tailwinds in this industry than headwinds. So while our bookings number this quarter was still reflective of these near-term dynamics, we are seeing lots of positive proof points on the longer-term outlook, which align with these trends. For example, we have seen our domestic project pipeline double from June 30th to September 30th.

This is a strong sign of the health of our demand overall, but also showcases the traction our new product offerings are gaining with our customers, as we already have multiple gigawatts of quoting activity on both the H250 and the OmniTrack. Also, we're pleased to note that we have recently signed three long-term agreements, which collectively will represent multiple gigawatts in future projects. All of these agreements included deposits tied to dedicated capacity and represent programs that initiate in the Q2 of 2024 and beyond. And finally, of the $320 million of IRA-related projects that were on hold at June 30th, we only saw $35 million convert to orders this quarter, which leaves almost $300 million still sitting on the sidelines. This means we have not yet unlocked anywhere near the full value of those projects into our order book.

So while we will obviously wait until our Q4 call to provide a more detailed discussion about 2024, I am encouraged by the positive indications we have been seeing. If we turn to the next slide, this quarter, I want to give a brief update on two exciting business developments. Last week, we announced our plans to expand our operations in Albuquerque by leasing a brand-new, built-to-spec, 216,000 sq ft manufacturing campus. This expansion is exciting as it reinforces our long-standing relationship with the community, but also will give us the space to drive even more operational improvements and domestic manufacturing flexibility. We are appreciative of our partners in the state of New Mexico, and we look forward to updating you more on the progress of our new facility as we move forward.

Next, building upon what I discussed last quarter on non-tracker revenue streams, last week, we also announced the rollout of our services and training offerings. These offerings include commissioning, preparation and process training, installation training with a Golden Row, operations and maintenance, and page turn best practices. While these offerings will be a small portion of our revenue initially, we do see a path for these services to become a larger part of our business over time and will positively contribute to our overall gross margin. Each of these value-added services are designed to reduce operational downtime and increase productivity while improving our customers' overall experience with each of Array's product platforms. To support these offerings, we have also expanded our customer and product support teams over the last year, which has included hiring of directors of services, product management, and training and development.

While we remain early in our journey on the expansion of non-tracker offerings, elements like these training offerings have already helped to increase our margin expectations for the full year, as Nipul will now discuss in more detail, along with a further analysis of the quarter. Nipul?

Nipul Patel (CFO)

Thanks, Kevin, and I appreciate the kind words. After nearly a five-year run of turning a privately held company into a successful public company listed on Nasdaq, it is the right time for me to step down as the CFO. I am grateful for the opportunity to have worked alongside such a collaborative and talented team. I thank Kevin for his leadership and for supporting my career growth, and I believe Array is well-positioned, strategically and financially, to continue its growth and drive value for our customers and shareholders. I'm highly confident in Array's leadership and future, and I look forward to working with my successor, Kurt, on the smooth transition in the upcoming months. I'd also like to thank the employees at Array for their hard work and support over the years. It has been an honor working alongside them.

That being said, let's get into a summary of our Q3 financials. Please turn to slide six. In the Q3, we reported revenue of $350.4 million, compared to $515 million for the prior year period. It's important to note that our Q3 revenue excluded the impact of a $20.1 million Brazil value-added tax, or ICMS, that was reclassified from revenue to cost of revenue. This reclassification was determined to be appropriate after we evaluated the expected treatment of governmental incentives for the 45X manufacturing credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, but has no impact to profitability or cash flow. The comparable amount in the prior year was $8.2 million and was not reclassified out of revenue.

Our reported $350 million in revenue reflects roughly $245 million from the legacy Array segment and $106 million from the STI segment. This result was driven by both a 22% decrease in the total number of megawatts shipped from 4.4 GW to 3.4 GW, and a 12% decline in ASP from $0.116 per watt to $0.102 per watt. As communicated last quarter, this was an expected volume decline and change in project timing year-over-year, given the scale of project pushouts we've seen due to the various macroeconomic elements at play. Additionally, the ASP decline was also anticipated, given the reduction in steel, aluminum, and logistics costs year-over-year.

This quarter, we introduced adjusted gross profit and margin as a new non-GAAP metric, following the reclassification of our developed technology amortization expense from operating expenses to cost of revenue. We believe this reclassification aligns the presentation of our financials more broadly with industry peers, and this change did not affect operating income, net income, or earnings per share for any current or historical periods. That said, adjusted gross profit increased to $91 million from $82.4 million in the prior year period due to improved gross margin, despite the reduction in volume. Gross margin increased to 26% from 16% on an adjusted basis. Adjusted gross margin was 25.3% for the Legacy Array business and 27.6% for the STI business in the quarter.

We were pleased to see our margin performance continue to benefit from our operational improvement and focus on our non-tracker revenue opportunities. Operating expenses of $47.2 million were down $12.2 million from $59.4 million during the same period in the previous year. However, we had a $12 million improvement in amortization expense year-over-year due to lower amortization of intangible assets related to the acquisition of STI. Excluding this impact, our operating expenses are roughly flat year-over-year. Net income attributable to common shareholders was $10.1 million, compared to $28.4 million during the same period in the prior year, and basic and diluted income per share was $0.07, compared to basic and diluted income per share of $0.19 during the same period in the prior year.

This decline year-over-year was largely due to a $43 million legal settlement we received in the Q3 of 2022. Adjusted EBITDA increased to $57.4 million, compared to $55.4 million for the prior year period. Adjusted net income increased to $31.4 million, compared to adjusted net income of $28.9 million during the same period in the prior year, and adjusted basic and diluted net income per share was $0.21, compared to adjusted basic and diluted net income per share of $0.19 during the same period in the prior year. Finally, our free cash flow for the period was $69.4 million, versus $102 million for the same period in the prior year.

On a year-to-date basis, our free cash flow of $126.4 million represented a 238% year-over-year increase. Now, I'd like to go to slide seven, where I will discuss our updated outlook for 2023. For the full year 2023, we now expect revenue to be in the range of $1.525 billion-$1.575 billion. This update to our top-line guidance was driven by three factors. First, the ICMS reclassification, which will reduce our outlook by approximately $25 million. Second, we had four projects that were delayed due to developer financing challenges. While we fully expect these challenges to be alleviated in the near future, we no longer can count on the deliveries to occur in 2023.

Third, we had several projects with permitting delays in Spain, which we now expect to deliver in the beginning of 2024. However, as a testament to our continued operational improvement and our focus on high-margin non-tracker offerings, we are largely holding our Adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS guidance, as we have increased our gross margin outlook to be in the mid- to high-20s% for both segments. We now expect to be in the range of $280 million-$290 million for Adjusted EBITDA and $1-$1.05 on adjusted EPS.

It's important to note, these changes do not reflect any assumed benefits from the 45X Manufacturing Credits, although we are actively finalizing with our suppliers and will provide an update to the market when final 45X guidance is provided, or once we complete the agreements with our suppliers and have ensured proper recognition on timing under US GAAP. Finally, with the improvement in our Adjusted EBITDA margin, we are well on track to deliver our previously provided free cash flow guidance of between $150 million and $200 million for the full year, as Kevin mentioned. Now, I'll turn it back over to Kevin for some closing remarks.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Thank you, Nipul. I am pleased with our performance this quarter, as we once again delivered better-than-anticipated earnings. We continue to work hard on improving our business and our product and service offerings to ensure we deliver increasingly more value to our customers, and we look forward to updating the market on even more exciting progress in this area in the near future. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, Sal. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one on your telephone keypad.... A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star and then two if you would like to remove yourself from the question queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one now. The first question we have comes from Mark Strouse from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Mark Strouse (Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst of Alternative Energy and Industrials)

Yes, good afternoon. Thank you very much for taking our questions. I wanted to start with the projects that have been delayed. So just to be clear, these are delayed. You're not seeing any cancellations, you know, other than the Brazilian contract that you mentioned. And then anything on timing? You know, what are you hearing from your customers? Is this kind of a matter of months, quarters? Is it just kinda indefinite until they renegotiate?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Yeah, Mark, this is Kevin. Good question. Thank you. So we haven't seen any meaningful cancellations yet at all, and what we are seeing is just these project delays and shifts. Quite often it's really relative to these customers going out and trying to renegotiate PPAs prior to moving forward on projects. That's one of the biggest things we're seeing. And that's new and on top of the interconnect issues and panel availability issues that we've had for a couple of quarters now. So what we're seeing in terms of delays is customers pushing out not, you know, two weeks or three weeks, but they're pushing out measured in months, three, four months at a time right now.

And what they're trying to do is push it out, and then again, we get into the winter build season in North America, so they're not pushing it out to, you know, January or February. They're pushing it out to March, April, and May at this point. That's kind of what we're experiencing. So, you know, as expected, every quarter, we look order by order, go through, talk to the customers, ensure that that project is on, for example, for a December shipment. And what we're just experiencing now is on some of these, they're pushing out of this year and into the end of Q1, beginning of Q2, and that's really what we're experiencing.

Mark Strouse (Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst of Alternative Energy and Industrials)

Okay. And then just a follow-up. On the 45X split, or the IRA 45X, you know, understand we're still waiting on the government here, but, you know, we were under the impression that there was better clarity that the industry was getting as far as kind of what the splits might be between the different participants, you know, within the value chain. Any update there that you can help us kinda quantify how to think about, and how you've historically talked about keeping about a third or so of that 45X credit? Thank you.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Yeah. Another good question, Mark. So I can only say that, as usual, we won't negotiate against ourselves in a public forum, right? But I will tell you that while historically you've heard me say we think it's gonna be a third, a third, a third, what we're negotiating now in all cases is greater than half coming to array. And I think that's, you know, substantial upside to what we thought previously. So I think we're gonna continue to negotiate each of those contracts with vendors on an individual basis, but I think we're more optimistic than we were perhaps a few quarters ago.

Mark Strouse (Executive Director and Senior Equity Analyst of Alternative Energy and Industrials)

Great. Okay. Thanks, Kevin, and thank you, Nipul, for all of your help since IPO.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Thanks. Thanks, Mark.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question we have comes from Julian Dumoulin-Smith of Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, just wanna come back to the delay question first and foremost. Just when you think about, you know, the shift in the backlog here, or perhaps contemplated within that bucket, how do you think about this adding to the backlog versus, say, just, you know, adding novel projects, right? I mean, in theory, you should be seeing something of a bloat in the backlog. And then maybe the secondary question here is, as you set, perhaps 2024, is there... [unclear]

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Step-up in terms of volume? Is that what you're asking?

Julien Dumoulin-Smith (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah, I was saying on 2024, a step-up here, just how you're thinking about, you know, recovery, like, recognizing these projects that are delayed. And then just why are we not seeing more of a bloat in the backlog? Kind of an expansion.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Yeah. So what we're seeing where we're seeing the bloat is really in what we call our pipeline, meaning, and I think it's incredibly significant. It's the fastest growth in the pipeline that we've seen. And for our overall pipeline, that's the stuff that's coming into the top of our funnel to double in one quarter. That's incredibly significant. What we're still seeing is that delay in getting them through the pipeline converted to orders. That's gonna continue to be a delay until we have clarity around the IRA, for one aspect. Because, again, our customers are not sure what we need to quote them, right? So they're telling us... So the pipeline is getting bigger because we need to be planning for demand scenarios.

That conversion from that overall pipeline into our order book is elongated and delayed simply because we don't know the rules yet. We have had a few customers say: "Listen, I get it. You don't know the rules, so quote me at X% of domestic content to the best of your knowledge and ability today, because we need to give you an order and get moving." That's happened, but that's what we represent of that $320 million that was sitting on the sidelines waiting for IRA clarity. That's only happened to about $35 million of that, where customers are saying, "Look, I've got to get an order out to you. Let's get going." Others are still waiting for that additional clarity.

So I think you're still gonna see that, you won't see that bloat up in the order book just yet until we have that clarity. You are gonna see some customers need to go forward under a looser set of, of understanding, if you will, not fully defined. So I think we are gonna see that through the end of the year. And then, the second part of your question as it relates to 2024, I think some of these challenges are gonna continue into 2024 for the entire industry. I think if you recall, you can't just push and add more to the specific size in a given year because of labor constraints, interconnection constraints, and things of that nature.

So I don't think it's as simple as adding all the push from this year onto next year, plus the overall, what would have been viewed as the market growth rate of, you know, 20%-30% CAGR previously. I think it's gonna be a little bit more muted than that, as we go forward into next year, still waiting for some of these things to get cleared up.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Got it. In the international backlog, you feel good at this point, just given the dynamics you described on the prepared remarks?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Yeah, we feel really good about Latin America, feel good about Australia, good about Europe. I think we, we feel pretty good. We've had a great level of growth, as you've seen this year internationally, as we've really focused on working on those businesses and improving the, the quality of those businesses. So we, we expect that to continue going forward.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Excellent, guys. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question we have comes from Donovan Schafer of Northland Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Donovan Schafer (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, guys, thanks for taking the questions. So my first question on the project delays is, you know, I guess, Kevin, you just hinted at, you know, there can be labor constraints and other things, but if some of the projects that have been delayed, you know, if they're able to ink a PPA, you know, tomorrow or the next day, with, you know, your customers are able to turn around to their customers and find the right price that allows them to proceed with the project, it, you know, can that drive, like, can that be pretty quickly converted into revenue? Or would it, even if that was something resolved, you know, hypothetically tomorrow, would that then still take another, you know, quarter or something before it could flow through and have an impact?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

You're correct. It'll, it'll still take a quarter of our standard lead time, right? So what we're trying to be really mindful of this here is that we're not pre-ordering and presupposing all this stuff gets cleaned up by a particular month, and therefore, overinvesting in our, our supply chain, right? So we're being very mindful. We're communicating with these customers literally on a daily basis, as some of them are going out for additional PPAs. We're, we're truly having calls every other day to get an update from them on, are they successful? And I can only say that in, in every case that I'm aware of, that I could think of in these communications, they're confident that they're going to get that revised PPA, but they're just saying these are negotiations that, that take longer than, than a couple of weeks, right?

And the way one of the large developers put it to me is, look, fundamentally, the end utilities that are purchasing this energy have previously made commitments to their customers and to their shareholders of hitting very particular targets in terms of a percentage of renewable energy. And we all know that the demand for energy is increasing, and we all know that that's a definitively lower carbon source of energy that customers are looking for. So again, we feel really good about those fundamentals, and we feel good that they need this renewable energy. So in all cases, we're hearing that they're having very favorable discussions in terms of renegotiating these PPAs. It's just a timing issue. And again, that's-

Donovan Schafer (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

almost a verbatim quote from one of our large developers who's in this very position right now.

Donovan Schafer (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. And then as a follow-up, I know in this space there, you know, there can be very large projects, there can be a lot of lumpiness, kind of in this business in general. But, you know, I have to ask just because, you know, we have had some other, you know, equipment providers, you know, that serve the US utility-scale, you know, market, whether it's trackers or, you know, other kind of equipment, that showed some, you know, sequential improvement this quarter. And so, you know, do you think that comes down to just lumpiness and maybe kind of related, if you can comment on it?

Is it maybe a case where we could see something here like what we saw in Q1, where you were almost sort of being punished for having high domestic content and not—like, if you're not high domestic content, you're not compromising on price, then maybe that leads to more customers kind of holding out again to get the next incremental piece of guidance. Are those any of factors? Anything you can share there would be very-

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

I think it's a consistent set of factors that we're seeing as we're really focused on that domestic content customers. Those are the same customers, and that's why we've identified the $300 million sitting on the sidelines that we had hoped would have converted, but we all cannot control the pace with which the government is providing this level of clarity that's needed to go forward. We all had hoped it was hitting their previous deadline, which was October, but October obviously has come and gone without any clarity, and now the latest update is that we may hear bits and pieces by the end of the year, but likely not the full story.

And again, as I just alluded to, so what you have is you have a couple of customers asking for quotes with a lot of, I should say, leeway or liberty on our side, is that, well, we could give you this at this price, given this definition, but we're not gonna guarantee that that'll be the final definition. And some of those customers are saying, "That's okay to me. I need to get going," right? But that's only, you know, of the $320 million, that's $35 million only, right? So it's a small percentage yet that are moving forward despite the lack of clarity, right? And again, I'd caution people to not think about bookings on a quarterly basis as you did in Q1, and then Q2, we had a great level of bookings that surprised to the upside significantly.

That lumpiness and that seesaw, I think, is gonna continue for a couple of quarters.

Operator (participant)

Thank you, sir. The next question we have comes from Tristan Richardson of Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

Tristan Richardson (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, good evening, guys. Appreciate all the comments on, on what you're seeing in the market. Maybe if you could just help us out from a, a, update on average project size, either in the pipeline today, or, or at least in the backlog, either from a, a MW perspective or, or even a dollar perspective.

Nipul Patel (CFO)

Hey, Tristan, it's Nipul. On average, in our order book and backlog, it's about 150 MW.

Tristan Richardson (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

Great, that's helpful. And then, and then maybe just, you know, are there any other characteristics kind of where you're seeing this, this dynamic with respect to developers? Is it for, you know, smaller projects, or, you know, larger projects that are perhaps a little bit more dependent on financing, et cetera? Is this just a-- or is this more broad-based?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

It is broad-based. So, as you know, we do quite a bit of work in the C&I space as well. We believe we're the largest provider of trackers to the C&I space, and while we've been experiencing this for now, a couple of quarters on the utility scale, we're also seeing it in the C&I space in the last quarter. It's really coming to light of the delays. So I think it's something that's more broad-based. And I don't think anyone's immune from this in the industry. So if anyone out there is saying, "Look, this isn't happening to us at all," I don't believe that. It's consistent. I'm constantly on the phone with developers and our partners, and it's a consistent theme that I'm hearing in the marketplace. It's not an Array issue, to be clear.

Tristan Richardson (Director and Equity Research Analyst)

I appreciate it, Kevin. Thank you, Nipul. All the best.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Thanks, Tristan.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, just a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one now. The next question we have comes from Jordan Levy from Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Jordan Levy (VP and Equity Research Analyst)

Afternoon, all, and I would just echo everyone's comments, Nipul. Thanks for everything. Maybe just to start sort of on... I'm curious how, you know, all of these dynamics in the market right now, with the project delays and that sort of thing, if that's had any influence on what you're seeing from a competitive landscape perspective, and just give a broader update there from what you're seeing.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

No, there's nothing we're seeing that's different from a competitive landscape. What we saw, you know, earlier in the year was much more price aggression from some of our competitors. I think that's abating somewhat now, as we get into the back half. Outside of that, not really seeing any changes in market dynamics that are noteworthy.

Jordan Levy (VP and Equity Research Analyst)

Appreciate that. And then maybe just as it relates to the new product rollouts in 2024, how should we think about that in light of the IRA guidance, and, and is it beholden to kind of the same factors we're talking about for the broader order book?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

A new product development going into next year? Look, I'm one of the areas I continue to be most excited about is the amount of effort that we've put into our accelerated new product development. We talked about a little bit on the last call. We still have several exciting announcements to make in terms of of new products to come out, both in Q4 and then into next year. And I would just say, just stay tuned and let us get through our timing internally, and we'll make those announcements as appropriate. But, but there are some exciting things going on here in Q4 yet, and then again into next year.

Jordan Levy (VP and Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks so much for everything.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

You're welcome, Jordan.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question we have comes from Brian Lee of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Brian Lee (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Nipul, you will be missed. Pleasure working with you. Best of luck in your next venture.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Brian.

Brian Lee (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

I guess the question I had, and I apologize, I had to jump on late, if you already covered this. You know, a couple of quarters ago, you mentioned $150 million being pushed from 2023 to 2024. Yet at the midpoint, there's about another $150, not quite, coming out of the guidance, revenue-wise. So... Is it fair to assume, do you have visibility that that, you know, roughly $300 million of revenue, which has come out of this year, is firmly in 2024? You know, do you have that visibility and sort of timing commitment from these customers that you've seen slip into next year?

Or is there some of that where you're having to go back and re-win the business, or you're, you know, waiting to make sure that these customers are still gonna move forward with their products? Just wondering, you know, how much of this is just timing versus, you know, some of this stuff actually maybe just moving out into the right and, and not going back?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Yeah, Brian, I think that's a great question, and I'll tell you, it's almost 100% exclusively timing. We've not had project cancellations at this point. The bulk of these have slid to the right, but, you know, historically, if something would have slid to the right, it would have slid to the right, weeks or maybe, you know, six weeks, right? What's happening now is they're sliding to the right, you know, certainly three months, right? Four months. So we do have visibility to these next year. As I said, none of them have been canceled. We're not renegotiating rates on these for our products. So this is simply about getting financing, getting supply of panels, getting supply of labor, and/or getting a revised PPA or a connection date. That's what we're doing. But none of these projects-

Brian Lee (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

[unclear].

Brian Lee (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Fair enough. No, that clarification is super helpful. I guess the second question I have is just around. I know you alluded to it in a prior question, but maybe just diving into it a bit more, if you could elaborate. On a quarter-to-quarter basis, I know we shouldn't get too infatuated with, you know, the bookings number and sort of what the implied, you know, share ebbs and flows are between you and other tracker players in the space. But, you know, over the balance of this year, you know, there's been a couple of pushouts for y'all that maybe others in your peer group haven't been seeing.

So the natural question is, are there changes you're seeing in the competitive landscape, market share-wise, anything that you know, is notable, just given, you know, this is a couple quarters here where you've had some issues around timing, whereas maybe some of your peers haven't had as much of that through the balance of this year?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

I think there's a few things to think about. The first, what I'll tell you, is I think market share flexes from quarter to quarter quite a bit with the inclusion of one, two, or three projects when you're looking at the increasing size of the utility-scale landscape here per project. So that's certainly something. I think there's a secondary component, which really has to do with the percentage of business that's domestic, US-based, experiencing these, versus international. And we all recognize that we have a higher percentage of domestic revenue, in our business than maybe some of our other public peer companies.

So, you know, if you were to sit here and talk about this in Q1 or Q2, you would have been looking at us and our publicly traded competitors, and looking at us within 0.5 percentage points of market share domestically, right? I think that was indicative of a strong gain in 2022 for Array and a rapid loss of market share for one of our competitors. Right on the back of that, what we saw was some really aggressive pricing in the market, and we chose to hold our discipline in price.

And I think that still, in my gut, was the right decision, to not dilute our value proposition, dilute our price, and I think that will serve us well in the maintaining of margins and hitting our margin aspirations as we, as we finish this year and turn into 2024. So outside of that, no different dynamics that really I want to talk about. I don't think there's any real changes. Look, as it relates to new product and software, every quarter, one of us is one up and the other in a, in a small percentage, back and forth, back and forth, and I think that's gonna continue. We both are investing a lot in new product development, both in terms of our product portfolio as well as our software portfolio.

So I think you're gonna continue to see that, and I think it's gonna continue to be, you know, largely a few players controlling the bulk of the domestic market as we go forward, and we're certainly gonna be at that table.

Brian Lee (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, makes sense. I'll pass it on, guys. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question we have comes from Colin Rusch, from Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Colin Rusch (Managing Director and Head of Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization Research)

Thanks so much, guys. You know, with the new products in hand, can you talk about the competitive environment outside the U.S. and just how intense it is at this point, and how much progress you're making in terms of moving customers through the sales funnel?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Yeah, I think that the difference outside of the US, again, none of the markets are monolithic. They're all very different. And the experience we're having in Brazil in terms of tremendous market share recovery, and Australia is different than Europe, and the price points are radically different in each one of these regions. And I'd say the biggest focus for us is increasing our competitiveness by leveraging our global supply chain, first. Second, is taking our joint engineering organization and cost-reducing our product portfolio. As an example, as we rapidly launch the H250 for the U.S., and again, we'll initiate deliveries of that in January 2024. We quickly had such demand for that product for both the EU and LATAM region for that improved product line.

And I think, I don't think we gave the data on the call, but we've got over 6 GW in various stages of quotes of that already, on a global basis, and there's a significant amount of that that is outside the US So that revised product platform is getting a lot of attention globally. It's. And I think that's probably one of the biggest efforts we'll do to be more competitive internationally. It's the launching of that product on a global basis, the addition of the array software on top of that product, and then leveraging the global supply chain to continue to cost reduce and be more competitive on a price basis internationally. Those are the three levers that we're pulling, and we feel really good about our, our traction that we have thus far.

Colin Rusch (Managing Director and Head of Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization Research)

Perfect. Thanks so much. And then just in terms of, you know, how you execute against that and the spend levels on the R&D line, how are you expecting that to trend? You know, you've been able to get some pretty significant operating leverage to date. Is there something you're gonna need to spend, you know, in a meaningful way to deliver on all of those elements? Or are you gonna be able to do that within, you know, the pre-reasonable budget, similar to what you've been spending recently?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Yeah, I think if you look at the, the uptick, I believe this year we were up circa 40% in terms of R&D as a percentage, and I think that's more respectable level than what we were historically. And I think the team's going to deliver a phenomenal funnel of new product development for that spend. But I want to be absolutely clear on this: I think the use of our profit to generate more incremental new product development, I really believe in. And if the team continues to bring me great new product ideas that are vetted by both sales, product management, and the engineering organization, I'm gonna continue to fund them, even if I have to increase that, right?

Running an engineered products company, your new product development is one of the lifebloods of your company, and we're gonna continue to spend there because I think the more we dive in and the more we open our eyes to what adjacencies we could get into with our products, we feel stronger and stronger about it. So we're gonna continue to emphasize new product development. We'll be spending at least a similar amount next year, if not accelerated further.

Colin Rusch (Managing Director and Head of Sustainable Growth and Resource Optimization Research)

Thanks so much, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question we have comes from Joe Osha from Guggenheim Partners. Please go ahead.

Joe Osha (Senior Managing Director of Equity Research)

Hi, thanks for taking my question, Nipul. I hope you have some great plans. Just to return to the issue we've all been talking about, obviously, you've got developers going back and trying to open, reopen PPAs. PUCs don't always necessarily roll over. Sometimes they do things like say, "We'll give you half of it, go find the rest elsewhere." So I am just wondering how you feel about the issue of potentially some of these developers coming back to you next year and saying, "No, we didn't get everything we wanted. We need you to reopen conversations on the, you know, on the contract and the price?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Yeah, that's a great point. So, clearly, what you're seeing is that as these developers over the last years had settled for a particular IRR and interest rates are rising, that IRR is no longer attractive when you could go put your money in a CD and get 5% today, right? So they're raising their hurdle rates, and they have two choices there, right? It's either go back and raise PPA, so they're de facto raising revenues, or the flip side of that is they've got to go and reduce costs. So are we having conversations with developers on how we could redesign sites to take cost out of those sites for those developers? We absolutely are. That would be a natural occurrence for us at this stage. So we are having those dialogues.

I would say, in some cases, there are some pricing concessions on that. But again, thus far, we've been able to offset those with cost reductions. But certainly, that's a natural dynamic that we can see as we go into next year. Absolutely.

Joe Osha (Senior Managing Director of Equity Research)

Thank you. Just to follow up, I mean, obviously, this is happening, but, you know, the fact that, you know, rates are high is not a surprise for anybody. Is the fact that this seems to be hitting now just a function of people getting their ducks in a row for the end of the year or what? It's interesting to me that this appears to be occurring now when the rate environment, you know, has been with us for a while.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Yeah, I agree, and that's—absolutely, I 100% agree with you. The rate environment has been with us a while, so we're a little bit caught off guard that this is happening more now, more recently. But we've had conversations with developers who are simply raising their internal rates of return expectations given this environment. And obviously, where a lot of, a lot of our customers are counting on the IRA benefits to support that, coupled with falling module prices, and then also the domestic content matter is the big piece that I think a lot are counting on to further move forward on some of these projects, so. And I think that's probably- Okay, just-The incremental delay is that piece, that we all expected it to be resolved.

Joe Osha (Senior Managing Director of Equity Research)

I'm sorry to belabor this, but I do wanna—You said something very interesting there I wanna clarify. It's less, it sounds like, about bank financing being more expensive, since most of these guys have that locked in anyway. It's more about developer internal IRR hurdle rates. Is that what you're saying?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Well, yes, I think it's both. I think it's about, you know, one developer I spoke to about a week and a half ago, who's challenged with this very dilemma. Right now, it's also about that developer being able to sell a project at a particular IRR in the future... given other interest rates and other investment alternatives, right?

Joe Osha (Senior Managing Director of Equity Research)

Mm-hmm. Thank you so much.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Okay.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question we have comes from Jon Windham from UBS. Please go ahead.

Jon Windham (Head of Alternative Energy and Environmental Services Equity Research)

Hey, thanks for taking the questions. I just want to talk about the adjustment in revenue. If we exclude the Brazil-related accounting classification, there's about $118 million pushed off into next year. But yet you're more or less maintaining the EBITDA guide, which means basically 21 million of EBITDA that's not being pushed out. So can you talk a little bit about what's driving the higher profitability and what you are shipping?

Nipul Patel (CFO)

Yeah. Hey, Jon, it's Nipul. So the higher profitability is continued favorability in logistics costs and material costs that we're seeing flow through for the balance of the year. We had a couple of projects we talked about that were delivering in the back half of the year at the lower challenged margins, especially in overseas. Those have been a little bit delayed, and so then therefore, that's helped with the pricing, helped with the overall margins. But that's the reason why we're keeping the mid- to high-teens gross margins for the full year.

Jon Windham (Head of Alternative Energy and Environmental Services Equity Research)

Got it. Maybe just a quick follow-up. How much of the, you know, project delays do you see as a function of customer selection, or is it a bit more random, and certain developers have certain problems with projects? Or is there anything you could do due diligence-wise to try to lessen these in the future? Thanks for taking the time.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

No, there's nothing I could think of that we would do differently. No.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The next question we have comes from Tom Curran from Seaport Global Securities. Please go ahead.

Tom Curran (Senior Equity Analyst of Oilfield Services and Sustainable Energy Technology)

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Would you share what non-tracker offerings accounted for as a percentage of 3Q's top line, and maybe give us an estimate or range for their likely contribution to full year 2023 revenue? And then I guess part two on this topic would be, as I think about the non-tracker side, it seems to consist of four drivers: aftermarket sales, engineering services, SmarTrack monetization, and then better change order capture. Perhaps, would you provide us an update on the progress you're making with each?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

No, Tom, sorry. I don't... I think it's too premature. We've been at it for a few quarters. It's still gonna be lumpy. I think we're gonna end the year very pleased with our overall revenues in that space, because, again, it's been a high quality of revenue for us, but we're not, at this point, ready to go and delineate by sub-segment or to give you a forecast for the full year 2023.

Tom Curran (Senior Equity Analyst of Oilfield Services and Sustainable Energy Technology)

Okay, I'll try again, maybe in 2024. But, Kevin, could you perhaps maybe just highlight, you know, with within those four subsegments, as I'm categorizing them, are there any, you know, that are clearly in the lead right now, or, you know, that you're more optimistic about or, you know, making more progress with faster than others?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Look, I think they're all contributing at a really exciting rate for us. You know, if I think about SmarTrack software, for example, what's in the order book is five times what's been deployed to date, right? So that's an exciting piece for us. The better change order management is really about taking what were profit leaks historically and converting them into positive, both revenue and margin, and that's going really, really well for us. And this is about making sure we're balanced and fair with our customers.

But again, if we have to take back material or dispose of something, that we're doing that in a more effective way than maybe historically, where we may have played too much of a nice guy in the middle, if you will. We're doing that. The engineering services are going very well for us, so I think every single one of them are beginning to contribute. But to be clear, what's driving it is really the fact that we brought in product management. We decided to productize each of those, which meant clearly delineated value proposition, sales literature, content, value selling training for the sales team, ensuring that they're quotable upfront in the project, going back and looking at how we harvest our installed base and look at some of the additional O&M services we could do after that.

It is a really comprehensive amount of work that's been done over the last six months to drive that, and I'm just really pleased with the level of traction that we're getting on all that. And again, it, it's a good quality revenue for us as we go forward.

Tom Curran (Senior Equity Analyst of Oilfield Services and Sustainable Energy Technology)

Got it. That was some helpful color. And then, Nipul, best of luck. And just as you prepare to pass the baton here, would you refresh us on what was your leverage target, as part of the ongoing debt reduction? You know, what were you hoping to get to?

Nipul Patel (CFO)

Yeah, the secured leverage is gonna be under one by the end of the year, and the total debt was gonna be around two to two and a half.

Tom Curran (Senior Equity Analyst of Oilfield Services and Sustainable Energy Technology)

Got it. Thanks. I'll- [unclear]

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

We're very much on pace. Yeah, very much on pace for that. We're very pleased with the cash flow of the business at this point.

Operator (participant)

... Thank you, sir. The next question we have comes from Philip Shen of Roth MKM. Please go ahead.

Philip Shen (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Hi, all. Thanks for taking my questions. I'm jumping on a bit late here. Nipul, it's been great working with you. Sorry to see you go. I know this may have been addressed from some angles, but wanted to just see if you could talk about any patterns you're seeing for the push-outs, meaning, are you seeing any similarity, similarities with the developers, or, you know, are they smaller ones, or Are the utility developers typically not impacted? Or have you seen, you know, delayed projects even from the larger utility developers? Are there any other patterns as it relates to access to capital?

I know you were talking earlier, Kevin, about you know just making internal decisions of requiring a higher return, but just curious if you could see or share any patterns with these customers. Thanks.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Phil, it's nothing that we're willing to give any additional color on at this point. I think it's suffice to say, it's been actually fairly broad-based. I don't think there's been any customer subsegment that's been immune to it at this point. I leave it at that.

Philip Shen (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah, that is great color. So thank you. Shifting to the implied Q4 EBITDA margin, was wondering... You may have touched on this earlier as well, with international being maybe a bit of a drag, but was wondering if you could give us some more color on the implied Q4 EBITDA margin, which seems closer to 13% versus Q3's 16% in the H1 of 2020. What's driving that, and would you expect a recovery back to, you know, either 16% or even 20% in the H1 of next year? Thanks.

Nipul Patel (CFO)

Yeah. Hey, Phil, I'll take that one. So, the implied EBITDA margin is really related to the gross margins that we talked about. We had some projects that we're going to deliver in the back half of this year, finish up the projects in the U.S. from our STI division there. They were going to finish up, and they were lower than our expected margin rate. And we had a project or two related to the Array side, which we had signed a while ago, that we knew that was going to be a little bit challenging on the margins. So similar to what we had said in Q2, those will still deliver here in Q4, providing the lower than expected gross margins and therefore dropping down to the EBITDA margins.

Philip Shen (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Great, thanks. And so I know you don't have guidance for the H1 of next year, but would it be fair to presume that, you know, after these projects are taken care of, we get back to the normalized, call it 16-20?

Nipul Patel (CFO)

That would be our expectations, yes.

Philip Shen (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you very much. I'll pass it on.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. The final question we have comes from Sean Milligan from Janney. Please go ahead.

Sean Milligan (Senior Research Analyst)

Hey, thank you for fitting me in this afternoon. Just wanted to touch base on the new products, H250. I think you quoted over 6 GW in various, like, bidding stages globally, and then OmniTrack also. I guess for both of those, you talked about pretty robust bidding. Curious, in terms of, you know, one, do you view that as an incremental opportunity for you relative to, like, where you would have bid DuraTrack before? Just kind of, maybe could you address, like, what the TAM is for that in terms of gigawatts. And then two, like, are those bids for 2024, 2025? How should we think about that?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

So the first part of your question relative to... I think you're asking how much of it's incremental versus replacement or cannibalization. If you think about the Array OmniTrack, we expect that to be a part cannibalization of DuraTrack in a better fit product, but also lead to about a 10% increment in TAM. So that's kind of how we look at it from that product. As it relates to the STI 250 and the strong bookings that we're seeing there, or the strong funnel, if you will, that we're seeing there, there's a portion of that that is replacing the old STI 250, where customers are just now saying, "Look, I really want that new product.

I would have given Array the order previously for the old version, but I really want the- I was just recently in Brazil, where I was in the room, where we were talking to a customer that was placing a very large order, who demanded that they get all new product as quickly as possible, right? So I think a portion of that will be incremental, and a portion of that will be replacement. But I will say that's replacement at accretive margins to the product it's displacing. Hopefully, that's helpful.

Sean Milligan (Senior Research Analyst)

That's helpful. And then kind of the second part would just be in terms of the bidding that you talked about in the 6 GW, is that, you know, for 2024, 2025? How can we think about that in terms of timing potential?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

I think it's split. There's at least half of it that I would say is really about 2024, and then there's another large multiyear VCA, if you will, that would cover two years. That's a big portion of that 6 GW as well. I would say it's largely 2024, with a portion of 2025.

Sean Milligan (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. And then just to... You mentioned, in the first response, you mentioned kind of the margins being accretive to the legacy product on 250. Are they in line with, like, quarter margins, where you'd expect to see those shake out?

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Yes. I mean, what you've seen, if you just look at the gross margins of the STI business, and certainly in this quarter, we've been focused on the recovery of the STI gross margins. I think that focus over the last year has gone very well. They are back to pre-acquisition gross margin levels, so we're quite excited about that. And as we launch the new product, that's, again, a product with really good gross margins for us as we go forward. So I think we're quite satisfied there.

Sean Milligan (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you for fitting me in this afternoon.

Kevin Hostetler (CEO)

Absolutely, Sean.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you for your participation.