First Solar, Inc. (NASDAQ:FSLR) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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And then the other is just working through our supply chain glass, in particular. Our new Series seven product in the U.S. is 90-plus percent of the production of the build materials here in the U.S. And we’ve got to continue to expand our supply chain for things like steel, back rails and glass €“ cover glass and substrate glass, for example. So we’re working through all that. And so we just €“ we’re being patient. We’re obviously focused very much on continuing to see the demand and strong bookings that we have been able to capture over the last several quarters. So that bodes well for furthering that investment decision. As it relates to exports, I think we got to all be real careful with that. I think that in some limited capability, that would make some sense.

But if you look at even what’s going on in India right now, that they’ve provided a lot of incentives to the domestic industry, which are, unfortunately, choosing a set of supporting the domestic market, exporting products into the U.S. right now because of higher ASPs in the U.S., and clearly, that’s not aligned with the mode administration and what they intended to do with the incentives that they put in place, I think we have to be careful as an industry as well that if we are availing ourselves to significant incentives here in the U.S. And not supporting our domestic needs, and then I think we could all compromise the €“ and put at risk the IRA and the benefits that have been created through IRA. And the thing we should just €“ my view around this is we’ve got 10 years of has been very well documented and very well thought out from an IRA standpoint, let’s stay, true to the spirit and intent.

And that is to help the U.S. create long-term energy independence and security in manufacturing in the U.S. and then exporting internationally, I’m not sure aligns with what the original spirit was of the Act.

Operator: And now we’ll take a question from Maheep Mandloi of Credit Suisse.

Maheep Mandloi: Hi, Maheep Mandloi from Credit Suisse. Thanks for taking the questions. And slightly to talk about the revolving credit facility, could you just talk about the timing on that? And Also, does that kind of avoid the need for any other capital needs as and when you decide to add new capacity here? Thanks.

Alex Bradley: Yes. So the main reason there is if you look at cash flow generated across the business, we sell today the vast majority of our products into the U.S., both from our U.S. facilities and our Malaysia and Vietnam facilities. However, the way that our profitability works is we transfer price, the significant amount of the profitability associated with production of the international modules back to the international locations, and we also send cash back as well. If you look at our CapEx for the year, about three quarters of the forecast CapEx for the year is going to be in the U.S. And so what we expect to see over the year is that as our cash profile comes down, we’re starting the year at about $2.4 billion of net cash, we have, about a forecast, $2 billion CapEx program.

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