SolarEdge Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ:SEDG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Jordan Levy : On the battery attach rate, apologies if this was already answered, but in terms of ramping production of the 3-phase inverters to keep up with sort of the battery demand, can you just talk about how you see that progressing over the coming quarters?

Zvi Lando : Yes, I mentioned that in Germany, as an example, for us, more than 60% of our people installing our 3-phase inverter are attaching at least one battery and actually, in many cases, more than one battery. We released last quarter a new 3-phase inverter with backup capability and other features. And there’s very strong demand for that — and that is one of the items that I met answered the earlier questions in terms of our focus to ramp. It will probably take us quarters from now until we are really at a run rate that matches demand and our supply. So if that’s the question, that’s probably the time frame towards the third quarter where we will be at the target capacity for manufacturing the 3-phase residential backup inverter.

Operator: And we’ll take our next question from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer.

Colin Rusch : Can you talk a little bit about the cost reduction efforts that you’re going through as things start to loosen up on the supply chain side and you’re able to free up some engineers to do some incremental engineering? Could you talk a little bit about the plans and cadence around taking cost out of the products?

Zvi Lando : Yes, Colin, I think while the situation is somewhat better in terms of component availability. We are still at the point where a significant portion of the R&D resources are still engaged in qualifying multiple vendors for supply of components, especially in order, not only in order to meet the production capacity and demand, but also to put ourselves in a robust position for the future of having multiple suppliers for various components. That said, we did resume cost reduction R&D activity. But I think the majority of the margin improvement that we’re expecting this year is still around improvement in logistics areas and things like that. It will take time for R&D-related cost reduction efforts to take effect.

Colin Rusch : Okay. That’s super helpful. And then in terms of getting to some of the targeted operating margins, can you talk a little bit around the cadence of the operating leverage that you’re expecting as you work through the balance of the year, understanding that you’re not guiding for the year, but I just want to think about kind of the targeted cadence for how you realize some of that optimization.

Zvi Lando : So here, it’s actually — it’s mostly related to how fast revenues are growing due to the fact that we have more products sold than especially batteries. And here, Colin, when a salesperson is going to an account to a distributor and selling an inverter and a battery, it’s actually the same sales efforts as we do — and he does just going and selling an inverter. And I can tell you that also given the fact that the teams that are working on developing batteries are smaller than the ones working to develop an inverter is much smaller because it’s a little bit more of a simple product. This is also relatively low. So I think that — it’s not even something that we actively do in order to be more efficient and simply the fact that the more battery we see, the more attachment rate that we see everything is just falling into place when it comes to this efficiency.

So I wouldn’t say that there is a minded effort or a thought of how to increase the efficiency other than the fact to simply sell more in each and every sale that we do.