Canadian Solar Inc. (NASDAQ:CSIQ) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Shawn Qu: Philip, thanks, and we are also pleased that we received the approval for the registration. We will talk to our bankers about the roadshow schedule, roadshow and pricing and investment schedules and hopefully update you. Now in terms of the amount of proceeds to be raised and also the use of proceeds, Huifeng do you want to address this question?

Huifeng Chang: Yes. Thank you, Shawn. Yes, Phil, so what you said earlier is much more planned. However, it depends on the market condition. We all know that a lot of things happening in the capital market in the U.S., Europe and also we expect the high volatility in the Chinese capital market, too. However, as you know, we have been working on this for 2.5 years. So obviously, we want to get that deal done as soon as possible. And then there’s a process such as further update our financial information and then roadshow et cetera, et cetera, but it will be very quickly and doing process, no more regulatory approvals are needed. Going forward, it’s our own marketing efforts with the bankers, et cetera, and the investors. And then in terms of the use of proceeds, obviously, the good news only arrived this morning, a couple of hours ago.

And before that, we actually have prepared the cash for the $1.5 billion CapEx in the new year. So now with this IPO proceeds, now in certainty, obviously, we’ll be looking for speed up even more in vertical integration and capacity expansion, especially the support to the U.S. market.

Philip Shen: Great. Thanks for all that detail. Shifting gears to shipping costs was — can you comment on what the shipping cost was in Q4 in terms of cents per watt? And then what do you expect the run rate to be ahead? Do you expect — can you quantify how much it might come down? I know you gave some color earlier. But I was also wondering if you could help us understand what your OpEx as a percentage of sales is expected to be as we get through the year?

Yan Zhuang: Okay. So in terms of shipping cost, it came down to just a little over $0.01, like $0.015 in Q4 and $0.013 in Q1. So it was much lower than the peak was like almost $0.03, so more than $0.03 actually in the peak. So as you know, the total shipping cost will increase as volume goes up. The unit cost is coming down, not saying we’ll maintain this low level and we bounce back a little bit. But overall, we see the situation stabilized coming back to a normal stage. And most importantly, as the ports worldwide are back to normal. We don’t have congestions anymore. The congestions can be very costly. So operating expense, we don’t see any major change because aside from the costs that are associated with the volume growth. And actually, we do see some leverage scale — on scale. So our profits should improve, the volume going up.

Philip Shen: Great. I’ll ask one more. As it relates to the margins, you guys gave the official guidance for Q1. Just looking ahead for Q2 and Q3, can you talk through how you expect the margins to trend without giving official guidance? Do you see potential more — potentially more strength in Q2 and Q3 as poly potentially comes back down and the shipping costs continue to support you?