Sunrun Inc. (NASDAQ:RUN) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Tristan Richardson: Maybe just kind of curious, you talked about prioritizing some markets and the strength you’re seeing in the direct channel business and obviously the long-term strategy to grow the direct channel business. Maybe if you could touch on the partner channel and just kind of what you’re seeing there, just what we’ve heard from big box retailers, et cetera, foot traffic. Just maybe curious on outside the direct channel.

Paul Dickson: Yes. So we had — as you saw really strong performance from our affiliate partners as we call them in our business this last quarter. We continue to see strong demand to get on to our platform, but have long held kind of a strategy around biasing towards scale versus driving towards attracting the smaller and long tail players. We have a really heavy focus on customer experience as well as installation quality. And so while demand remains and I would say, with this transition of the IRA adders, growing demand for dealers to join our platform, holding those standards kind of throttles that volume and ensures we’re able to maintain installation quality and the customer experience that we require.

Tristan Richardson: Helpful. And then just on the $2,000 NPV on the battery side, I mean, should we think of that as — this is a high-level number that incorporates some of the cost savings you’re seeing in the hypothetical example you gave? Or should we think that there could be upside to the 2,000 over some medium-term period of time?

Danny Abajian: And are you referring to the grid services number? Or was it the backup attach?

Tristan Richardson: Backup attach, sorry.

Danny Abajian: Yes. So yes, on the backup, it’s — I think it’s a weighted impact of a few thousand dollars per customer as we get the attach rate up overall in the business. But if you are actually walking one system from solar only to back up, it could be a little more meaningful than that.

Operator: Next question is coming from Philip Shen from ROTH MKM.

Philip Shen: Want to explore the guidance cadence a bit more. So over the past 5 years, your Q3 installations are typically up, on average, 18% quarter-over-quarter but you’re guiding Q3 installs to be down 11% quarter-over-quarter. And then for Q4, historically, over the past 5 years, the cadence is down 10% quarter-over-quarter but then the implied Q4 installers are now up 18%. I know you talked about it a little bit already, but I was wondering if you could talk bigger picture about that cadence, what’s driving the weaker Q3 guide on a historical basis and then the reacceleration for Q4?

Mary Powell: Yes. Just to be clear, for Q3, we’re going to be up year-over-year is what we’re guiding to and up year-over-year for the entire year, obviously as well. That said, I think we hit pretty clearly like what we’re seeing is that we had this dip and it happened at the same time that we’re selling much higher value, multiple product systems to customers. So that also impacts sort of the installation and cycle timing. So that’s why, as I hit, we see Q3 as solid but really a transition quarter as we’re moving into, again, multiple products for a very strong percentage of our overall customers.

Philip Shen: Great. And then shifting over to 2024 and California. So I know you don’t have guidance out and you won’t give guidance and this is — I’m not asking for guidance. But looking in California here, our work suggests you guys are doing really well in California with NEM 3 originations, you guys talked about today. And we have a sense that maybe you guys can break — you guys be flat year-over-year growth on originations maybe in Q3 or if not maybe in Q4. I was wondering if you could talk through that at all a little bit. And then to the degree that you are flat year-over-year on that growth in Q3 and Q4 last year, very strong periods, that is a leading indicator for what 2024 could be for you guys. So I was wondering, you currently have this 10% to 15% growth for this year. For next year, do you think there’s an opportunity for you guys to accelerate in 2024? Or do you think this 10% to 15% kind of growth pace feels like the right level.