Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Enphase Energy second quarter 2015 financial conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session, and instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference, please press star then zero on your touch-tone telephone. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would like to introduce to you today's host for your conference, Ms. Christina Caravino. Ma'am, you may begin.
Good afternoon, thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Enphase Energy's second quarter 2015 results. On today's call are Paul Nahi, Enphase Energy's President and Chief Executive Officer, and Kris Sennesael, Chief Financial Officer. After the market closed today, Enphase issued a press release announcing the results for its second quarter ended June 30th, 2015. We are providing an accompanying presentation with our earnings call that you can access in the investors section of our company's website at www.enphase.com. During the course of this conference call, Enphase management will make forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements related to Enphase Energy's financial performance, market demands for its microinverters, advantages of its technology, market trends, future products, and future financial performance. These forward-looking statements are based on the company's current expectations and inherently involve significant risks and uncertainties.
Enphase Energy's actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements as a result of these risks and uncertainties. Factors that could cause results to be different from these statements include factors the company describes in its press release of today, especially under the section entitled Forward-Looking Statements, as well as those detailed in the section entitled Risk Factors of the Company's Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2014. Enphase Energy cautions you not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and undertakes no duty or obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of new information, future events, or changes in its expectations. Also, please note that certain financial measures used on this call are expressed on a non-GAAP basis and have been adjusted to exclude certain charges.
The company has provided reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP financial measures in its earnings release posted today, which also can be found in the investor relations section of its website. Now I'd like to introduce Paul Nahi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Enphase Energy. Paul?
Good afternoon, thanks for joining us today to discuss our second quarter 2015 financial results. I'll provide some key highlights. Kris will take us through the second quarter financials and the outlook for the third quarter. After that, we'll open up the call for Q&A. We delivered solid financial results for the second quarter of 2015. Demand for our solar energy systems was strong in our core U.S. residential markets, as well as in Europe and Australia, resulting in a quarterly record of 195 megawatts shipped, an increase of 48% year-over-year. We reported revenue of $102.1 million for the second quarter of 2015, an increase of 25% year-over-year, and non-GAAP gross margin of 32.7%. We also reported solid bottom-line results, including positive non-GAAP operating income and net income, along with non-GAAP diluted earnings of $0.06 per share.
Since inception, we've shipped approximately 9 million microinverters or 2 gigawatts of Enphase microinverter systems. There are currently over 340,000 Enphase systems in 97 countries. In the U.S. market, second quarter revenue was up 22% year-over-year, as we saw continued strong customer demand for our microinverter system and the expansion of our customer base. Our market share in the U.S. residential market, excluding Vivint, continues to be strong and growing. With our new customers and partnerships, such as our recently announced strategic supply agreement with Sunrun, we expect this trend to continue. As a preferred supplier of solar energy systems to Sunrun for its home solar installation business, Enphase will provide its microinverters to Sunrun's direct installation services business for the first time.
Sunrun recognizes that Enphase offers a smart, differentiated, and financially compelling approach to clean energy generation that delivers strong economics, excellent system performance over the life of the project. We look forward to working together with Sunrun, not only as a preferred supplier, but as a partner in delivering intelligent energy solutions. During the second quarter, we signed an agreement with Repower by Solar Universe that establishes Enphase as the primary solar energy system supplier for Repower's unique integrated solar power and smart home energy system. In the commercial sector, we continue to make headway with our C250 commercial product solution. During the second quarter, Enphase and MyGeneration Energy completed and commissioned a 900 kilowatt commercial project featuring our C250 microinverter system.
MyGeneration Energy and other commercial installers recognize and appreciate the Enphase C250 value proposition of optimal performance, less wiring and fewer balance-of-system components, and significantly reduced design, labor, and overall construction costs. Turning to our international business, revenue was up 37% year-over-year, mainly driven by strong growth in Europe and the APAC region. In Australia and New Zealand, second quarter revenue increased nearly 200% year-over-year. We continue to view the APAC region as a significant growth area. In addition, we're seeing increasing global interest for our energy management system, which consists of our microinverter, AC Battery, and load control, all managed by our cloud-based application, Enlighten.
I recently visited with current and potential customers in the U.K., Europe, and Australia, and came away very impressed with the strong interest in our energy management system to address regulatory requirements, increase the economic benefits of a solar system, and enable more energy independence. Interest in our AC Battery solution is especially robust. After discussions with customers all over the world, we're confident that our AC Battery, with its modular architecture and seamless integration into Enlighten, will be unique in its simplicity, its ease of installation, performance, and cost-effectiveness. It's important to note that the anticipated growth of energy storage will continue to increase the value of an energy management system. A home, building, or grid employing a system comprised of solar generation, energy storage, and load management, will require an energy management system to create a total solution.
With hundreds of thousands of customers already using Enlighten, the path toward total energy management for Enphase customers has already been paved. We'll start testing and begin certification activities of our AC Battery storage solution later this year, as we prepare for our market launch in early 2016. Now, I'll turn over to Kris for his review of our financial results.
Thank you, Paul. I will provide some more details related to our financial results for the second quarter of 2015, and then I'll provide the business outlook for the third quarter of 2015. As a reminder, the financial measures that I'm going to provide are on a non-GAAP basis, unless otherwise noted. Total revenue for the second quarter of 2015 was $102.1 million, an increase of 25% compared to the second quarter of 2014, and an increase of 18% compared to the first quarter of 2015. The large year-over-year growth was driven by strong overall demand for Enphase Energy microinverter systems in our core U.S. residential and commercial markets, as well as further market share gains in our international markets. As you all know, our revenue growth has been affected by Vivint's transition from a single sourcing strategy with Enphase to a multi-sourcing strategy using multiple other inverter vendors.
As a result of this headwind, our customer concentration with our historically largest customer has been reduced from approximately 30% of our total revenue in the second quarter of 2014 to approximately 14% of our total revenue in the second quarter of 2015. Due to this strategic shift, revenue from Vivint was down approximately 40% year-over-year. Revenue excluding Vivint was up over 50% on a year-over-year basis. Our impressive top-line growth outside of Vivint speaks to the continued strength of our business and value proposition, with many large, medium, and small customers in the residential and commercial solar markets worldwide. We shipped a new quarterly record of 195 megawatts AC, or approximately 225 megawatts DC, during the second quarter of 2015, an increase of 48% on a year-over-year basis, and an increase of 21% sequentially.
Megawatts shipped excluding Vivint were actually up approximately 80% on a year-over-year basis. The 195 megawatts shipped represented approximately 859,000 microinverters, of which substantially all were our fourth-generation microinverter systems. The Enphase M250 represented approximately 35% of all units shipped, up from approximately 30% last quarter. Inverter prices on a price per watt basis were down slightly at approximately 2% sequentially, and down approximately 10% year-over-year on a constant foreign exchange basis, in line with our historical pricing trends. Gross margin for the second quarter of 2015 was 32.7%, exceeding our outlook of 30%-32% we provided last quarter. During the quarter, our engineering and operations team continued to execute very well on our product cost reduction plans. Operating expenses during the second quarter of 2015 were $30.3 million, a reduction of 1% compared to the first quarter of 2015.
During the second quarter of 2015, R&D expenses were $11.6 million, sales and marketing expenses were at $11.5 million, and G&A expenses were $7.2 million. We have been able to keep operating expenses at the same level for three quarters in a row at approximately $30 million, while continuing to make great progress on many of our R&D projects, which include the development of our AC Battery storage technology and energy management system, the fifth-generation microinverter system, further product cost reductions, and other new and innovative next generation technology building blocks. Going forward, we will continue to practice rigorous discipline in managing our operating expenses. Total non-GAAP operating expenses excluded $3.3 million in stock-based compensation expenses and $1 million in severance costs, offset by a favorable $1 million revaluation of the acquisition-related contingent consideration liability.
We reported another quarter of non-GAAP operating income with $3 million of operating income in the second quarter of 2015, a major improvement compared to non-GAAP operating income of $6,000 in the second quarter of 2014. For the second quarter of 2015, non-GAAP net income was $2.8 million or $0.06 per diluted share, compared to a non-GAAP net loss of $400,000 or a net loss of $0.01 per share in the second quarter of 2014. On a GAAP basis, net loss for the second quarter of 2015 was $600,000 or a net loss of $0.01 per share, compared to a GAAP net loss of $3 million or a net loss of $0.07 per share in the second quarter of 2014. In summary, I'm pleased with our financial performance in the second quarter of 2015.
The combination of strong top-line growth, solid gross margin, and flat operating expenses drove significant improvements to our bottom line and profitability. Turning to the balance sheet, we exited the second quarter of 2015 with a total cash balance of $31.9 million. Cash flow from operations was an outflow of $11.8 million, driven primarily by a sequential increase in accounts receivable of $21.4 million, as the business was ramping up during the second quarter and as a result of the timing of shipments during the quarter. Inventory remained approximately flat sequentially at a level of $34 million. We will continue to take action to drive down inventory levels during the remainder of the year. During the second quarter, capital expenditures were $2.6 million, and depreciation and amortization was $2.5 million. Cash flow from financing activities was $19.1 million, which included a $17 million drawdown on our working capital facility.
During the remainder of the year, based on the seasonal patterns in our business, and as we drive down accounts receivable and inventory levels, I expect to generate positive free cash flows and repay any outstanding amounts on our working capital facility. Let's discuss our outlook for the third quarter of 2015. We expect revenue for the third quarter of 2015 to be within a range of $100 million-$105 million, which is an increase of 1%-6% compared to the third quarter of 2014. In this outlook, we expect that revenue with Vivint will be down to approximately $5 million in the quarter, which is a decrease of approximately 75% year-over-year. The non-Vivint revenue at the midpoint of the outlook range is up approximately 25% year-over-year. We expect gross margins to be within a range of 30%-32%.
We also expect non-GAAP operating expenses for the third quarter of 2015 to be flat to up 3% compared to the second quarter of 2015 as a result of certain one-time development project expenses during the current quarter. I will turn the call back to Paul.
Thanks, Kris. Before we go to Q&A, I'd like to take a moment to highlight the Enphase value proposition and our competitive strengths. We've continued to grow our business in every geography and every segment. We have an impressive customer list worldwide, and the demand for our products is strong and continues to grow. Our unique value proposition, as well as the superior quality and reliability of our energy system, resonates with customers globally. In the U.S. residential market, we currently have strategic partnerships with four out of the five top installers: NRG, Sunrun, SunEdison, and Vivint. We also have strategic partnerships with many new and upcoming players and, in fact, are seeing increasing momentum and growing market share with them. These customers continue to execute well on their growth strategies in the U.S. residential and commercial markets, as well as internationally.
It's clear that Vivint's ongoing inverter diversification strategy is putting downward pressure on our top-line growth. Despite this, Enphase continues to grow. We believe that our share of Vivint's business will normalize this quarter, after which we expect to continue to see overall growth. Our current customer portfolio is well-balanced with large tier 1 customers as well as with midsize and smaller installers, and no one customer accounting for a disproportionate share of our revenue. Recently, there's been a great deal of discussion about competitive pricing. We certainly recognize the increased pressure on inverter pricing that is affecting all suppliers. Pricing has been and will continue to be very important.
While we've said this before, it's worth restating that because of our advanced design, semiconductor-based technology, and proven track record, we have great confidence that the cost of our microinverter system will approach that of common string inverters and be lower than string inverters with optimizers. Enphase has an exceptional track record of cost reduction, and we will continue to reduce costs even further. In fact, our current cost reduction roadmap is more aggressive than ever. In addition to driving down product costs through innovation and semiconductor integration, a microinverter is uniquely able to leverage scale as well as the growing availability of higher power modules to further accelerate cost and price reduction. We will be providing more details about our product cost reduction roadmap in the coming months.
The combination of continued solid growth, aggressive cost reduction, ever-increasing performance and reliability, and the delivery of a complete energy management solution is proving to be very powerful and will continue to drive further growth with new and existing partners worldwide. We're more excited than ever about the many opportunities ahead. I'll open up the line for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, if you have a question, please press the star then the number one key on your touch-tone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up question. Again, if you have a question at this time, please press the star and then the number one key on your touch-tone telephone. One moment for questions, please. At this time, I am showing no questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Paul Nahi for closing remarks.
Thank you very much for joining us on the call today.
Go ahead and say
There may be a mistake. I think there may be some questions online.
Our first question comes from the line of Vishal Shah with Deutsche Bank.
Hey, guys. It's Jeremiah on the line for Vishal. Thanks for taking the question. I was just hoping you could expand a little bit more on the cost reduction front. I know you had said that at some point you hope to be lower than inverter plus optimizer, and competitive with inverters. Is there any kind of general commentary you could give around that?
Well, what we said is that we are going to be providing a lot more details about that in the coming months. At a high level, what I would say is, if you look at the history of Silicon Valley, it is all about cost reduction as a result of semiconductor integration and innovation. Our device, our microinverter, is based on a very complex and sophisticated semiconductor design. I think that what we are seeing right now in terms of cost reduction is nothing dissimilar that we've seen for many years with many other products in Silicon Valley. We're going to continue that trend, and as I said, we're going to be sharing with you a lot more details about this in the very near future.
Okay, great. I'll look forward to seeing that. Maybe on a separate topic, as you're expanding more internationally, I know you highlighted Asia Pacific specifically as a growth area. Could you talk about the markets that are being more or less successful there, and where the future growth might come from in APAC?
Well, we have a very strong team that's executing extremely well in Australia, and we've already expanded into New Zealand, and we are still very early in that region. There's a tremendous amount of market growth specifically in Australia and a growing market share in New Zealand. Having said that, we do not preannounce the introduction of our product into new geographies, I will say that as you look north in the Asia Pacific region, there are up and coming markets that we are very excited about, that our microinverter solution is extremely well-suited for, and we'll keep you informed as we have more details about that.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Edwin Mok with Needham & Company.
Great. Thanks a lot for letting me ask the question. First one is actually just follow on the international front. Two-part question, I guess. First is, there's recently some change in policy in the U.K. Have you seen or do you expect to see any impact to your business there? Relate to Australia, New Zealand that you highlight. I know that you guys had announced kind of a commercial version of the inverter in the international market. Does that help drive some, call it a small commercial growth in those markets?
In answer to your first question, there has been, and I believe still will continue to be, some policy shifts occurring in the U.K. However, it is not significantly impacting our business. Where again, we're relatively young in these markets, and there is a lot of market share ahead of us. We're seeing tremendous success. The brand is growing, the teams are executing very well. I expect to see continued growth in the U.K. market. As for Australia and New Zealand and the commercial markets there, we are actually very active in both the residential and the commercial markets in Australia and New Zealand. We have a slight advantage there in that the product is the same product as opposed to what's required in the U.S.
We're able to take advantage and leverage the technology we have, leverage the customer base that we have, to see continued growth. As we mentioned on the call, we've seen a 200% year-over-year increase. We expect to see continued growth in the Australian market.
Great. That's helpful. Chris, I have a question on the OpEx. You mentioned that there's some one-time development expense in the third quarter. Is there a way you can quantify it? Also, I think SPI is this quarter, right? Did that also contribute to increased OpEx in this quarter?
That's why we guided operating expense to be flat to up 3%. It's not a huge amount. There are some one-time expenses in the third quarter that result in a potential small increase of the operating expense.
Do you expect that to revert by the time you get to the fourth quarter, then?
Potentially, yes.
Okay, that's helpful. Last question, then I'll let the other guys ask. In the U.S. market, you guys announced a few new customer, like Sunrun and Solar Universe. On some of those bigger contracts, do you have to give any price concession for those contracts? As those ramp up, do you expect that to have some impact on your gross margin? Any way you can give us some color on that?
We're not going to comment on specific pricing for specific customers. We have a very competitively priced product, and there is a recognition that the value of a microinverter is unique, that a microinverter does produce more energy. It is easier to design, easier to install. It's the most reliable product out there, and that value is recognized by our customers. The gross margin that you see reflects the tier 1 customers as well as the tier 2s and tier 3s. I think we're going to continue to be able to extract the value of a microinverter as we attract both larger customers as well as smaller ones.
Okay, great. That's all I have. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Philip Shen with ROTH Capital Partners.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.
Sure.
First off, why did you raise the $17 million debt in the quarter? What do you see ahead? What kind of share do you see of the U.S. residential market in 2016?
Well, Phil, first on the $17 million debt. As you know, we ended last quarter with $27 million of cash at the end of Q1. At the end of the second quarter, we had $15 million of net cash. It's actually $30 million of cash with $17 million of debt. As you can see in the second quarter, accounts receivable increased to approximately $21 million, mainly driven by the ramp of the business in the second quarter, as well as the timing of shipments during the second quarter. We kept inventory approximately flat. As a result of that, I definitely have an increased working capital requirements, and we have a working capital facility there, and we used it.
As I said before, I do expect in the second half, given the seasonality of the business and given that I expect to drive down accounts receivable as well as inventory levels, to repay any of those outstanding amounts on the working capital facility.
In reference to the market share question, what I would say is that we're not going to guide to market share for 2016. If you look at the existing performance, we have been increasingly successful with small and medium-sized installers. We've added Sunrun most recently as a large installer customer, and that trend, we believe, is going to continue.
Great. I have one more question, and then I'll jump back in queue. There's been a lot of discussion among investors comparing your storage solution with other offerings in the marketplace. Can you talk about the advantages and disadvantages of your offering versus competitors, since yours requires multiple stages of power conversion, while others may only have 1 stage of power conversion? Thanks.
Sure. There certainly is quite a bit of noise about this. Let me start by saying that the modularity of our solution is very unique and incredibly valuable. When you talk to customers in Australia, in the U.K., in continental Europe, the ability to right-size the storage solution for that specific application, for that specific customer, is critical in optimizing the return on investment. With an Enphase solution, you have the exact amount of storage that you need, no more, no less. In addition, the simplicity of our solution, because we're not encumbered by being tied to the solar system. For an Enphase storage solution, one person can hang one device on a wall, plug it in, and you now have storage. With our solution, one person can install an entire storage system in just a few hours.
Because it's not coupled with the solar solution, our installers can and are extremely interested in retrofitting existing installations with an Enphase storage device. The simplicity and the ease for the installer and the consumer, I think, are very pronounced and unique to our solution. In addition to that, there are other solutions out there, and there are, as an example, some optimizer solutions out there, that in fact have 7 stages of conversion. If you look at the efficiency of our solution, we will always be more efficient and produce and generate more energy than another solution out there. In fact, if you look at everything from the performance of our battery, which is north of 96% and close to 97% round-trip efficiency, compare that to some recently announced battery solutions that are down to 92% round-trip conversion efficiency.
If you look at the number of cycles that we have over our lifetime, somewhere in the neighborhood of 11,000 versus 5,000 for competitive solutions, it speaks to the support of our system to be able to do multiple cycles every day. I think in terms of efficiency, we're going to be far more efficient than any other solution. We're going to be far easier to install and manage. On top of everything, we will very likely be one of the most cost-effective solutions out there. Our discussions with customers around the world are really very exciting and very positive, and we're very optimistic about the success of our storage solution.
Great. Thanks, Paul. Thank you, Kris.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from the line of Michael Morosi with Avondale Partners.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. If I look at the revenue guidance that you imply with Vivint being down 75% year-over-year, and your other customers being up, I believe you said 25% or more, and Vivint being flat, or Vivint shares being flat in the third quarter, what does that imply as far as the fourth quarter? Should we expect that fourth quarter revenue should be up sequentially? Would we think in the same terms for margins?
Yeah. Michael, we typically only guide one quarter at a time, I'm not going to make a change here. Historically, if you look at our seasonal trends, we have seen that the fourth quarter is up slightly, flat to slightly up versus the third quarter. Based on the information that we have today, based on what we believe will continue in our Vivint business as well as the non-Vivint business, that's what we expect for the fourth quarter as well.
Okay. Maybe just taking a step back, with respect to cost, you talk about potentially intersecting or beating traditional inverter technologies. As we look at the quarter, if we just annualize your run rate of, say, 200 megawatts, we get to about 800 megawatts. That's implying somewhere below 2% of the global installation run rate. How do you think about just the segment of module-level electronics and where segment market share should go over time? Just focusing on the overall segment as opposed to share maybe within the segment.
Right. It's a good question. I think if you look at the advantages of a microinverter, and you look at the fact that we've had such tremendous success, despite the fact that we have been priced at a premium, and sometimes earlier on, at a significant premium over string inverters, it's clear that our customers value the microinverter and value what it brings to the table. As we talked about, more energy production, simpler to design and install, the most reliable product out there. It has tremendous value. The only thing that has really held back yet again, more market share adoption has been pricing. As I mentioned in the prepared remarks, we get it, that pricing is becoming increasingly important.
However, as we are able to close that gap and get closer to just plain vanilla string inverters to get under string inverters with optimizers, we think that the penetration of microinverters in the overall market should increase very dramatically. Not only will new markets and new segments open up, but we should see a very significant increase in market share, even in very well-entrenched markets. We're very bullish that this is the future. The microinverter, as you know, is also a precursor to an AC module where you have a microinverter attached to the back of the module, which will simplify the installation process yet again. You couple that with a complete energy management system, I think you have the foundation for the development of a very large portion of the market moving to a microinverter solution.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Krish Sankar with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Hello, this is Maheep Mandloi speaking on behalf of Krish Sankar. I have a couple of questions. For starters being, can you speak a little about the margin differential between your domestic and international sales?
We've stated before that our margins on the international business, especially taking into account some of the forex headwinds that we've recently seen, are slightly below average. There is not a big difference. It's, I would say, slightly below average.
Okay. Moving forward, would you be willing to sacrifice profitability for growth? Are there any situations where you would choose one over the other?
I would view that as these are business decisions that we make every single day, that we're constantly looking to optimize the business, which means growing the top line as hard as we can while maintaining profitability and increasing profitability year-on-year. Because of our aggressive cost reduction path, because of the value that we produce, because of the multiple markets that we're in, we're able to go in and surgically make that decision on a customer-by-customer basis, and we have done that. As a result of that, you've seen the share growth that we have had while increasing profitability. I guess the short answer is absolutely, we make those decisions every day, and I'm very confident that we're going to be able to continue that path of profitable growth in the future.
Okay. Just one more and I'll let the next person speak. Your September Q revenue has improved sequentially from June. I have a question as to why this next quarter's guidance to the midpoint is kind of flat in comparison to this quarter, seeing that sequential revenue has increased over the past few quarters.
Right. I think we've tried to explain that on the call. It's mainly driven by Vivint's revenue that is down 75% year-over-year, as well as drastically down sequentially as well. If you look at the non-Vivint part of the business, you can see that we expect a strong year-over-year growth as well as sequential growth in the third quarter versus the second quarter.
Thank you. Awesome quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Pavel Molchanov with Raymond James.
Hey, guys. You've talked about the headwinds relating to Vivint's dual sourcing. Now that they're getting acquired, what do you think will be the impact of the new ownership?
We have a long-standing relationship with SunEdison that goes back years. They have been a great partner for us, and we're working with them both domestically and internationally. As you know, we have a very good relationship with Vivint as well. We're very optimistic that the joint company, that post the acquisition, we should be in a very strong position to continue to grow both with the joint company as well as within. Our job right now is to make sure that we are supporting them both, again, domestically and internationally and providing whatever support we can. We are very optimistic about the relationship going forward with the joint company.
Okay. In relation to the kind of broader inverter landscape, and you mentioned the pressure on pricing, how much of that is reflective of the industry pushing to squeeze out costs in advance of the ITC cliff at the end of next year versus just general competitive dynamics among the different vendors?
I think it is a little bit of both. I think there's clearly a sense that people want to take advantage of the ITC as long as it's around and to leverage their strength in the market. I don't know that what we're seeing is necessarily just unique to the ITC. I think the nature of this market, given the fact that we're effectively competing with coal and gas-fired power, is going to be cost competitive, I think, is going to challenge suppliers to be very consistent and very aggressive in their both cost and price reduction strategy going forward. We don't think it's going to be necessarily uniquely a U.S. phenomena. We think we're going to see this worldwide. For us, we welcome it. We believe that as prices come down, markets open up.
As prices come down, the overall TAM for the solar market will continue to increase. We are better positioned than most to be able to leverage technology to help reduce costs. I think just all in all, I think you're going to see it globally. Then I think certainly over time, we will see prices sort of asymptote to a particular level, but I think that's probably a year or two out.
All right. Appreciate it.
Thanks.
Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have a question, please press the star, then the number 1 key on your touchtone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. Our next question comes from the line of Colin Rusch with Dougherty & Company.
Hi, thanks for taking my call. I'm calling in on behalf of Andrea James. I was wondering if you could expand on the excitement you described for the AC Battery solution. Are there any plans to develop some kind of a solution that would allow Enphase microinverters to connect to non-Enphase batteries?
The excitement is really quite palpable. We're seeing it in Australia, in Queensland, in New South Wales. We're seeing it in the U.K. We're seeing it in continental Europe. What's exciting about it is that there is, in these areas, a real economic case for storage. Whether it's a zero export rule that's happening in Queensland, whether it's the reduction of the feed-in tariff in New South Wales, whether it's taking advantage of the FIT program in the U.K., the demand and the desire for self-consumption in continental Europe. All of this requires the coupling of solar generation, distributed generation with storage. Because our solution is so simple, so cost-effective, and modular that can fit exactly the right place at the right time, as we've talked about, the demand is just really stunning.
The demand is coming for new systems to be built, as well as the desire to retrofit existing solar solutions with solar. That's very true in a lot of the regions we're with. In those areas, we could very well be retrofitting, or our partners could be retrofitting, a solar system that's not Enphase with an Enphase storage solution. In fact, we expect to see quite a bit of that. Obviously, new installs will very likely be a total Enphase solution. There are plenty of installs out there that don't use Enphase that could benefit from storage. Because we are not coupled to the solar, we can augment those solutions. You asked about the Enphase microinverter with other batteries. The fact is that we have a great battery partner, but we are chemistry agnostic. We don't have to be with a particular chemistry.
There are going to be multiple chemistries out there. Some are going to be outstanding. I think it's going to be a very contested space. I think we should see significant cost reductions and price reductions over time. We want to stay nimble and loose. While we have an outstanding partner right now that we're very excited to launch with, we are very much agnostic to the battery itself.
Great. Also, on cost reduction, do you have a timeline on that end goal of being able to beat those traditional string inverters, or at least be competitive with them and beat the DC optimizer-based systems?
We're going to be providing a lot more data and a lot more specifics in the upcoming months.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Sanders with Jed Equity Partners.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my call.
Sure.
Just to follow on the last question about the cost reductions and the coming announcements. I have in my notes that the Gen 5, the bi-directional inverter, should be coming to market sometime second half 2015. Is it fair to assume that those cost reduction conversations will come alongside the launch of the Gen 5 product?
Not necessarily along the launch of the Gen 5, but leveraging the Gen 5 platform to get to those costs, absolutely.
Anything you can tell us about the early customer trials of that Gen 5 and how it's going and maybe the progress and timeline for the launch this year?
We're very much on track. The testing certification is going extremely well. We plan to launch in the second half of this year. We are right on track to do that. I think it represents a huge leap in technology for Enphase. As you noted, its bi-directionality is what allows for the creation of an AC battery storage solution. In addition to that, it has all of the advanced grid functions that we haven't had in the past that now allow us to enter markets like Italy and Germany and a whole host of new markets as well. We're obviously very excited about it, and it's right on track.
Thanks so much, guys.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Morosi with Avondale Partners.
Michael?
Yes. Thanks for taking my follow-on. In the quarter, Kris called out a working capital drag, and it looks like there's a lot of cash tied up in inventory quarter-over-quarter. I wondered if you guys could just provide a little more detail around the nature of that. I know you expected it to unwind later in the back half, any more color there would be appreciated.
I've talked about that during the last call, that as a result of the port issues, we ended up with slightly higher-than-expected inventory levels in the first quarter. We have started to work inventory levels down in the second quarter, but only a little bit of a reduction. It was less than $1 million. We expect to continue to do that in the second half and see some further drastic reductions there on the inventory levels in the second half. The other reason, of course, was the increase in the accounts receivable, which was actually a bigger impact on the increased working capital requirements there.
There as well, given the seasonality of our business, we expect to drive down accounts receivable in the second half of the year, and as a result of that, generate positive free cash flows and repay all the outstanding amounts under the working capital facility.
All right, guys. Thanks a lot for taking the follow-up, and great quarter.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star, then the number one key on your touch-tone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. Again, as a reminder, if you have a question, please press the star, then the number one key on your touch-tone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. Our next question comes from the line of Peter Geis .
Hello.
Hello?
Hello. Yes. I missed the first part of the call. Maybe you addressed this earlier, but why was the patent infringement lawsuit dropped versus Enbridge?
I'm sorry, I didn't catch that question.
You may have addressed this earlier. Why was the patent lawsuit dropped versus Enbridge?
I don't know who Enbridge is. I think you may have the wrong company.
Okay.
At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would like to turn the call back over to Paul Nahi for closing remarks.
First of all, I'd like to apologize. I think there have been quite a few technical difficulties this time, and I appreciate your patience in putting up with it. I know it was difficult on this end. I would like to thank everybody for joining us on the call today, and we're going to look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.