Good afternoon, welcome to SPI Energy Fiscal Year 2022 conference call. As a reminder, this call is being recorded and all participants are on listen only mode. The call will be open for questions and answers following the presentation. On today's call are SPI Energy's Chairman and CEO, Denton Peng, COO HK Cheong, and George Milionis. Before we begin, the company would like to remind everyone that various remarks about future expectations, plans and prospects constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of safe harbor provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. SPI cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and may cause their actual results to differ materially from those indicated, including risks described in the company's filings with the SEC.
Any forward-looking statements made on this conference call speak only as of today's date, today, Tuesday, 18th April 2023. SPI does not intend to update any of these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after today. I will now pass the call over to Denton Peng, Chairman and CEO. Mr. Peng?
Thank you, Chairman, thank you to everyone for joining us today on our fiscal year 2022 earnings course. We are pleased to report we exceeded the top end of our guidance in 2022, generating of $177.5 million in revenue, up nearly 10% over fiscal year 2021. We are confirming previous issued guidance with a revenue expected in the range of $250 million-$300 million in the year 2023. With near-term expectation for positive EBITDA and net probabilities, we are confident that we will deliver between $29 million and $36 million net income for the fiscal year 2023. It's a monumental milestone for SPI, made possible by years of hard work for our teams who have been instrumental in helping to building our renewable energy company platforms.
This achievement is even more significant when considering our continued investment in our EV and our solar wafer manufacturing business in U.S. which are expected to further accelerate our overall growth in the quarters ahead as we strive to meet rapid growth, growing demands. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year, creating rapid growing industrial tailwinds. Due that our proud world-class team with multi-decade proven record of success have been built the strong foundation. Our American make solar brand, American brand module and the SEM WaferTech manufacturing business will place us in a great position to rapidly increase market share across each of our business units, ultimately enable us to unlock new value for our shareholders as we accelerate growth in the quarters ahead.
The last but not the least, our independent power producing company, Orange Power, and Australian distribution business, SolarJuice, have been profitable growth in the last three years. Our American module manufacturing business, Solar4America, have been growing with ramping up capacity and tend to be profitable since quarter four to 2022. Our solar project development company, SPI Solar, also expecting to contribute profit to the group this year. With all our about year-end expectations, we are confident that we will be EBITDA positive and net profitable and aim to deliver between $29 million and $36 million in net income for fiscal year 2023. I will now hand the call over to our Chief Operating Officer, HK Cheung, for further details of our operation performance in 2022. HK?
Thank you, Denton. I would like to provide a quick recap of some major accomplishment by business units. Our solar project development business, SPI Solar, accomplished multiple major milestone in 2022, including the completed sales of a 5MW solar project in Hawaii. We begin the development for a 7.2 MW community solar project on the 34 acres land in Southern California, and also begin the development on the second phase of our 32.4 MW share with solar projects on the 167 acre of land in Illinois. Additionally, we secure 273 acres of land in Maryland for a 78 MW utility scale solar project and a 465 acres of land in Illinois for a 54 MW of a utility scale project.
On the Orange Power, our independent power producer, IPP business, produced approximately 65.9 million kWh of renewable energy from solar projects in the U.K. Italy, Greece, and in Hawaii during 2022 and offsetting approximately 38,000 tons of the greenhouse gases. Orange Power revenue were up by 20% and its net income increased 83% in 2022 when compared to the previous year. On Solar4America, our solar module manufacturing business, after beginning production of our made in U.S.A solar modules in the second quarter of 2022, we finished strong with net profitability in this segment in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Now we have 700 MW production capacity, providing high efficiency solar modules for our residential C&I and UTC customer. We set the stage for accelerated revenue and profit growth in 2023 as we continue to ramp production capacity at our Sacramento facility, as well as our second newly leased facility in South Carolina towards our previously stated goal of 2.4 GW of production capacity. The SolarJuice Australia distribution business has been the leading distributor for our renewable products in Australia, and the business has been profitable growth in the last years. The business expects to continue to grow, growing in coming years with the cooperation with strategic partners such as Tesla, Enphase, Fronius, and Sungrow. The SEM wafer formation was one of our key achievement during the second half of 2022.
As demand for solar continued to grow in the U.S., there is an increasingly need for locally made solar wafers. We are targeting delivery and production of solar wafers in the U.S. this year, with capacity ramping to 3GW by 2024. Lastly, our EV business. Phoenix Motorcars was spun off last June under the ticker PEV. Phoenix provides sustainable and zero-emission medium-duty transportation with a range of products available to our customers, including shuttle and transit buses, school buses, delivery vans, and work trucks. Phoenix also has been developing EdisonFuture brands with the light-duty pickup trucks, SUV, and delivery vans.
Overall, the strong foundation we have established in key areas of the renewable sector, including solar project development, American solar module manufacturing, Australian distribution, and growing American-made wafers, as well as electric vehicles, have positioned us extremely well to capitalize on the wealth of opportunity to grow consistent cash flow and increase our gross margin and profitability in the years ahead. Looking ahead, our solar module and solar wafer manufacturing business are expected to remain strong growth drivers in upcoming quarters and importantly, with the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which create attractive incentives for companies to produce solar modules in the U.S. Our manufacturing division in California will now receive $0.07 per watt of incentive for the solar modules produced in that facility.
Overall, the strong foundation we have established in key areas of the renewable sector, including American solar manufacturing, battery storage, and electric vehicles, have positioned us well to expand our project pipelines, grow consistent cash flow from our operating assets, and increase our gross margin and profitability moving forward. On our R&D efforts, we also secured 2 groundbreaking provisional patents in 2022. One regarding machine learning technology to improve solar module manufacturing process, and a second patent application for an innovative apparatus to further automate the solar production lines and reduce the human errors. I will now hand the call over to George for further detail of our financial performance in 2022. Over to you, George.
Thank you, HK. This was our second 10-K filing and our first full year as a U.S. reporting company. This translates to increased transparency and more timely reporting of our performance metrics compared to our previous requirements as a foreign filer. For the year ended 31st December 2022, our net revenues increased 9.6% to $177.5 million, up from $162 million in 2021. Revenues continued to be mainly driven by increasing sales from our solar business lines. Our cost of revenues, which consist primarily of raw materials and labor costs, increased to $163 million in 2022. That's up from $151.4 million in the prior year and consistent with our increase in net revenues.
Our gross profit was $14.5 million in 2022, compared to a gross profit of $10.6 million in 2021, giving us a gross margin of 8.2% for the year, which is up from 6.6% in the prior year. As for general and administrative expenses, they declined to $35.6 million, or 20% of net sales in 2022, compared to $41.8 million, or 25.8% of net sales in 2021. This decrease was mainly due to the decrease in stock-based compensation expense. For total operating expenses in 2022, they decreased to $43.1 million, or 24.3% of net revenues. This was down from I'm sorry, $52.1 million or 32.2% of net revenues in 2021.
Interest expense was $7.2 million in fiscal year 2022, up from $5.1 million in 2021. Together, these and other factors resulted in a net loss of $33.4 million for the full year, which is an improvement of more than $11 million from the net loss of $44.8 million in fiscal year 2021. As of 31st December 2022, our total assets were $231.1 million, and we had $3.5 million in cash and cash equivalents.
As Denton has already mentioned, we hereby reaffirm previously issued guidance with revenues expected in the range of $250 million-$300 million in 2023. With near-term expectations for positive EBITDA and net profitability, we are confident we will deliver between $29 million and $36 million net income for fiscal year 2023. I thank you all for taking part in this call today, and will now hand it over to the operator, who will open up the floor for any questions that you may have at this time. Thank you.
Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our first question comes from the line of Tate Sullivan with Maxim Group. Please proceed with your question.
Thank you. Impressive increase in gross profit margin in fourth quarter in 4Q 2022 to 22%. Can you talk about what drove that increase in gross profit margin? Was it possibly some sales in the commercial solar business or what parts of that are sustainable going into 2023?
Thank you for the questions. The gross profit improvement, I think Jerry informed is a different business segments. The first one, the most important is our commercial module manufacturing in U.S. Simple investment, but now we're going 100MW capacity. This is already be profitable in last year quarter four. Then it goes then the margin growing every month, you see, and the operation in a few months. Now the capacity is 700MW . Demand is very strong. This will be the first driver of the gross margin improvement. Also we see our business, our solar project development business, CCE. We have behind, we will be some project we also will be in the progress, I think this year, especially in second quarter, third quarter. This year our solar project increase.
Also, we are driving gross margin improvements from it. The number three is our gross margin of our project business, our power, it is also increasing year by year, and gross margin also improving per year every year. Also a big driver also our distribution is. Because benefit from June's demands, even the gross margin to normal compare our modul manufacturing business is lower, but still the business is going well and also gross margin a little improved. I think generally these are the main track factor of our gross margin and it continues growing. I think especially our solar division for this.
You talked great. You talked a bit before about pricing for U.S. made solar modules. Has it still been at consistent levels? Has it been increasing and has demand continued to increase this year for U.S.-made solar modules too?
That's great. Actually, you know, we are for the solar module, this is our product. Actually, they are for the residential and also small C&Is project. We are looking into, you know, mid-50, you know, for the residential and probably in the low 50, you know, for the C&I space. The volume for the C&I project will be much larger than the residential, you know, our distribution business.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Tim Moore with EF Hutton. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks. It was nice to see the narrowing of the net loss in the fourth quarter and for the year. I have several questions for Denton, HK, Janet, George. I was wondering just first for your net profit guidance range for this year, can you walk us through that in terms of does it exclude any possible net loss from Phoenix Motor? Does it exclude stock-based compensation? Does it actually include your forecast for the $0.07 per watt of solar module incentive from the Inflation Reduction Act or even at $12 per square meter for wafers?
The business and revenue, of course, is including all the business we have combined. For the net income and also we consider the last continuing investment of our business in the EV and also for the possible investment on our wafer business this year, because the first year always you need to continue the investment in the business. Of course, the net income you consider that we should receive $0.07 for the grants for manufacturing grants for the solar module made in U.S. This is considered all in the factors for all the business total.
I think generally our solar business for the net profit margin do better and especially the solar module manufacturing, our solar electricity producing and also solar distribution business that the net profit should be and also solar project development business. The net profit should be more than what we guidance. We consider that we need to continue investing in the EV business and also the wafer business for the first year.
Okay. That's helpful. I just want to make sure that when I'm building my model, does it exclude stock-based compensation for the year? You know, that could be a few million dollars, and it does include in that $29 million-$36 million guidance. It includes what you're projecting for $0.07 per watt times the volume you sell from California.
Yeah, this includes the $0.07 because we are eligible to receive this grant according to the Inflation Reduction Act. This guidance not including, you know, like stock-based compensation, you know, this is really just not relating to the operation. This is also time to time, one time things when we cannot expect it. We can only do the best effort from the management to see the operation side.
Okay. No, that's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. I'm forecasting 110 to 200 million watts sold based on your sales guidance, and it seemed like that could be $10 million-$14 million of gross profit from the incentives. Does it include any from the wafer incentive of $12 per m2 ? Is that in your guidance for the net income?
Wafer, because this year we are in the process to construction and the facility builds. I don't expect any meaningful revenue come from this year. The wafer business should this year just expenses. It should be some revenue definitely coming from next year. It takes time to building a facility to, for manufacturing in U.S., even starting from next year.
Okay, that makes sense. No, that's really helpful on timing. You know, now the March quarter is pretty much done. Can you give us a sense of, you know, as you look at the ramp up for revenues from your in-house solar modules manufacturing in California, I mean, could it be $10 million of sales in the March quarter? Was it more than $5 million in the December quarter that you reported?
Yes. I think since it's in Q4, in the quarter, it's a little less than $5 million. In the quarter, first quarter, I think should be normally or nearly double. I think we expect our revenue could be easy to double every quarter. Mainly driving by, you know, the new training employee and you to hire employee in US is a challenge. It's always, you need, you hire enough employee and training them, and then you ramp up capacity, full capacity. This takes some time for the employee hire, training, and to ramp up to full capacity.
We expect, currently, because we have enough orders, a lot of demands, only we try to get our capacity ramped up to 90% or even 100%. Now we are much lower than that because we are in the process to ramp up to full capacity.
Great.
The number will be, we see will be almost close to double every quarter by quarter in the next few quarters.
Good. That's
Okay.
That's very helpful guidance, HK. My last question is, I'm forecasting $90 million-$95 million of sales this year from your module manufacturing in California. How do you expect to fund that working capital? Are you getting deposits from some big orders? Do you think because it doubles every quarter that you could self-fund a lot of it until we get to the end of the year?
Yeah, currently, we have our own resource of funding the current operation. In the meantime, we are very profitable, so we reinvest our profit to the business. Of course, now more and more customers, they want to secure the volume. They help us to build a new capacity to, you know, help us to increase our capacity. Even there are some customers they think about help us building a second factory in South Carolina. Definitely we will get the support for both operation and CapEx from different source and many, sometimes even for our customers.
Great. Well, thank you for that explanation. That was it for my questions. Thanks.
Thank you.
We have reached the end of the question and answer session. This also concludes today's conference, and you may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation.