Well, thank you for being back. Appreciate kicking this back off. We're here with Dan Shugar from, well, Founder and CEO of Nextracker. Again, if you guys have questions, just ping me here in chat, email, whatever, if you've got comments or questions. But he's gonna kick things off with some opening comments, a couple slides here, and then we'll move from there. And thank you, Dan, again. Really appreciate you taking the time here. Absolutely.
Great. Well, it's a tremendous pleasure to be here this morning. Good morning. I'd like to just cover we just heard a great presentation from the ERCOT lead into just the growing needs for energy we're seeing. We use the U.S. as a case study, but it's also true internationally. Period of fairly flat demand growth in the United States, about a 1% compound annual growth for about 15 years. Well, we had much more efficient appliances, like lighting, went from incandescent to compact fluorescent, LED. So the lighting's using about a fifth the amount of energy. Refrigeration uses a third the amount of energy. And so you had a lot of industrial capacity well, those days are over, okay, of flat load growth. We're seeing very strong load growth happening driven by a move to electrification for appliances.
For example, heat pumps are now used more often than gas. U.S. And the same's true internationally. We're seeing electric cars, being used. That's a lot of energy, to charge those cars. Electrification across the United States. For example, at my company, Nextracker, we've catalyzed 15 factories across the U.S. in the last two years that are shipped significant facilities, 100,000 sq ft-300,000 sq ft. We're also seeing a lot of growth in data centers and AI, consuming a tremendous amount. So the Energy Information Administration is forecast and at the same time, legacy power plants like coal are dropping off. And we'll look at the actual numbers in a moment. Nuclear plants are dropping offline or at the end of their life. So we're seeing a tremendous growth for.
So the Energy Information Administration's forecasting a 4.6% annually compounded growth for new power. It results in about 500 GW, excuse me, 500 GW of new power over the next five years and about 800 GW of new power over the next 10 years. Like a legacy coal plant is about 1 GW, a large one, about 1 GW. So that's a lot of power. So where's that power gonna come from? Energy Information Administration, which is historically very conservative on renewable growth, is forecasting that solar will be by far grid. They're forecasting a 26% annually compounded growth for solar for the next five years. And within 10 years, solar being the number one for the grid, the U.S. grid. And this is based on the economics of solar. It's the lowest cost way to generate power. It's power.
It's the lowest risk way to put power under the grid. So when you add all that up, solar. That's why solar is additions to the grid for the last 5 years, by far the largest source being added to the grid. And why it's gonna keep growing. I'm not showing on this chart, but the batteries are okay. There's 5 GW operating of batteries. Okay. We are gonna show that chart. But that's gonna this year by the end of this year. A few years ago, 2 years ago to 15 GW operating this year. 50 GW will be operating within 2-3 years. If we can go back to the solar will be the number one source of energy. So the EIA, the government, U.S. government, 26% CAGR with solar. Wind will also grow, about 11% CAGR.
All conventional polluting stuff, negative CAGR. Coal, -10% a year. Okay. So recently, as a dozen years ago, coal was over 50% of the national energy mix. Today, it's under 15%. It's gonna go to damn near zero within 10 years, according to the U.S. government. So solar and this is utility-scale solar, predominantly. Utility-scale solar, the big farms, that's what which are serving the community. But they're multi-megawatt plants. That's what we do. This will be the dominant source of energy. So what we do at Nextracker for solar panels I've done that. And that's super fun, interesting, fun stuff to do. What we do is we make the mechanical and electronic to move the panels to follow the sun, gaining up to 30% more energy.
That also, we measure the atmospheric conditions in real time and using the angle of the panels, also in concert with the terrain, to harvest the most amount of solar energy that comes out of it. So we went public about a year ago, percent CAGR for six years in a row with the company, with our top line. And, appreciate, the opportunity to speak today. Julien.
Awesome. Appreciate it. Maybe, just kicking things off here, right? So I think the first question, evidently, from that is, how do you think about growth here in the near term, right? 'Cause I think, you know, this 26%. To, address directly has gotten a lot of attention, right? And especially in the context of a lot of your peers where there's sort of this question of, like, is there is there growth this year question? A couple weeks. And there's this implicit question of, well, maybe it's a market share question. Do you wanna tackle that directly about how you're seeing, you know, your position in. 'Cause I think that's, that's, that's sort of at the core of a lot of this, I think.
Sure. My, my, my pleasure, Julien. Thanks for that question. So there are headwinds and there's tailwinds. Underperforming in the space, really highlighting a lot of the headwinds. Those headwinds include permitting delays, interconnection, equipment shortages, labor issues, inflation, cost of capital. Definitely. They're all real. And those things can impact any individual project. That's true. In totality, are stronger than the headwinds, starting with the what's embodied in the IRA is that the investment tax credit went from 10% to 30%. And if you meet some criteria, which some of our customers. 30%.
Every utility-scale project happening today was modeled with a 10% Investment Tax Credit. For all of them, 20%-30% tax credit. So let's use a hypothetical 100 MW plant. What's that worth? A plant, solar power plant. So it's 100 megawatts, dollar watt, it's $100 million. So this got a $20-$30 million tailwind with the Inflation Reduction Act having a higher Investment Tax Credit. Okay. Now, with the inflation, did labor go up a little bit? Or in the context of this plant, what would the impact be? I don't know, $1 million, $2 million? Did the interest rates go up? Yes. A couple million bucks? Sure. But from a financial standpoint, you're way better off today than you were 18 months early. Okay. Now, with respect to the implementation issues we spoke to. To get things permitted. That's true.
I've got interconnection queues problems with, you know, PJM or these other grids where but the universe of developers, the number of projects at each developer, the and the universe of EPCs, engineering, procurement, construction companies that build these is vastly larger. So we have this huge pool of participants in the there's incredible profit opportunity for them. And, and folks are moving to they wanna decarbonize. There's real goals out there with. So in totality, you're seeing the market up and to the right, which is why Nextracker has sustained a 30% growth, up through our projection, which is, through the end of this our fiscal year closes at the end of this month. The Energy Information Administration's projecting a 26% CAGR in solar for the next five years, you know, roughly in line with our historic growth.
You know, it comes down to companies that manage their business that are basically able to meet expectations that are able to weather unforeseen conditions in the market to basically be able to deliver on their forecast. Nextracker has, we've met or beat our revenue and our profit guidance, and we've met our profit target for each quarter. We've taken up our guidance. We just closed, and we had our call a few weeks ago. So we're seeing the market has never been as good for solar in the United States. And the same's true when it adopted a 30% investment tax credit. Nextracker has the largest operating fleet in Canada. It's a very, very exciting market. Australia policy tailwinds. Of the operating fleet in Australia. Now you're seeing Oceania region developing, including New Zealand, Singapore, projects in the region.
Latin America, huge growth has happened over time in Brazil, and throughout Latin America. Countries, we have operating systems there. In Africa, we have the largest operating portfolio. We're seeing that's a very vibrant market, early but growing. The first operating utility-scale system in Saudi Arabia. And there's a lot happening in Saudi Arabia. When Saudi goes solar, you know, they're like, "Hey, it's much more cost-effective for us to sell our oil at $80 a barrel or $50 a barrel or whatever the prevailing is." Like, save you know, basically, solar is much lower cost way to generate power than burning oil, even if the oil is there. Their marginal value is very significant. And we're seeing in, the largest actually is in Dubai. We've participated in that. In India, I was just there. I saw Prime Minister Modi give an electrifying speech.
Basically, they're all in on solar. Solar is, there's a huge market there. We have our second largest office there with well over 200 people. And we have the largest legacy operating fleet. Projects we're fulfilling. I could keep going around the world, but the market conditions have never been so strong in home and abroad.
Excellent. Actually, look, maybe earlier comments that you've said on the call as well as just now. How do you think about the proportion of international growth, right? I think you guys have this, like, broad heuristic of, you know, 2/3, 1/3, I think, is the number. Describing it right now, I mean, look, obviously, the U.S. is robust, but you've got entirely greenfield opportunities. Or maybe not entirely, but certainly, you've got a, you know, a running start in Canada, as you describe. It's not necessarily been on your, you know, top list in international markets, for instance, right? Like, a lot of new angles. How do you think about the growth in that heuristic in terms of here, and it's gonna continue to kind of over-index to international?
Well, we've been, Julien, historically, 50/50 overseas. We're a global manufacturer. We were manufacturing in over 30 countries. We have nine global offices. We're number one on four or five continents. And so we like the ability to, and we don't think about monolithically. There's 3,000 utilities in the United States, believe it or not. There's 50 states, 3,000 utilities. There's many planning areas. We're just one of them, but they're, they all have different rules. And so we kinda think of those as different markets. But we like the international diversification. In that market, we're able to accelerate into another market or vice versa. And what we're really focused on is just value t o customers in these markets that are developing high-quality portfolios. We've tried to move from projects to programs.
A commercial model we've talked about called our volume commitment agreement, where instead of transacting a project by a project with a contractor, what we do. More energy. We have a much stronger financial position than any other providers in our space. And so what we do is we enter into. Owners operate on multiple continents. We love those owners. And so basically, we focus on owners that understand a company like Nextracker can bring to the table. We'll be competitive. It'll be in the competitive range. But what that allows us to do when we move to a is just deliver a much better experience. If you're earlier in the cycle, it allows us to value engineer, save the companies a lot of money. Nextracker pioneered a technology in the solar space called extreme terrain-following tracker.
Many sites that are being built out there in the world. Around this for a second. Last fiscal year, we shipped on average about 325 MW or 350 MW a week. Okay. You know, that's like a small coal plant every week. Okay. That's what we did last year. That's 4 sq mi a week. 4 sq mi every week for the whole year. That's what we shipped. Okay. So when you build on these sites, a lot of these sites are undulating. The way folks were building is they'd bring they would physically grade the sites with bulldozers. Okay. That's a lot of earthwork. You have to cut it. You have to fill it. Then you have to reseed it. Okay. Technology in concert with some of our customers that actually follows the terrain. So you don't have to grade. No bulldozers or minimal bulldozer work.
It rapidly processes and lowers costs. These systems also generate more power. So, when you're earlier in the cycle with customers, it allows you to say. Avoid the bulldozer rate. The other competitors don't have that. So let us work with your customers, save all this money, and then they get to.
Nice. How do you think about the margin profile here? You talk about 50/50, two-thirds, one-thirds. You know, there's been this con, is the international market more competitive, right? You don't have the same IRA dynamics. But as you described, like, you guys are a premium product. You sell, you know, something that's better, right, if you wanna at least has more adaptability, you know, undulating terrain, for instance. How do you think about, you know, as you expand and lean into that international market? Again, take that as a premise. So you've been, you know, sequentially guiding up here on as well, right?
Yeah. I appreciate that. There are different margin profiles in different countries, different regions. Different margins than the others. The key thing is really having discipline about pricing, not chasing individual but to really focus on the high-quality customers. And we value all customers. But what I mean by that is customers that process. They, their projects have better entitlements with more secure offtake, more entitlements, better entitlements for the permitting where they value they understand the value of the energy. And they understand the value of investment-grade profile as Nextracker is, where we have over $800 million of liquidity. We've made money every year since I founded the company. We have a very. And we've delivered millions of trackers around the world. This is the type of thing we do for your power plant.
So if you're building again, going back to the 100 MW example, it's a $100 million plant. The tracker may be a $10 million scope. Why would you? If it's like 10%, you save $1 million. And then in the U.S., after the tax, a 30% tax credit and the accelerated depreciation, you know, it might be to go to a tier two for that. And then your whole skeletal and nervous system is dependent on a tier two provider that might be undercapitalized with that would just be an imprudent decision. The other thing is experience really matters. I've been in the industry since the 1980s doing this. Our executive team, we have over 20 years average solar experience on our team.
Maybe, Dan. Just near-term, medium-term growth in the space. Just one more time. I mean, I continue to get this inbound from folks.
Sure.
They're really just how do you think about what a sustainable growth rate is for you guys, your customers? I mean, there's been so much concern about, you know, delays from third quarter and fourth quarter. You know, basically, the bottom line is you're feeling on track even with your existing customers for this year. And more to the point, you see an ability to continue to compound in a very robust way. You talk about this 26% number.
Sure.
You know, going forward without guiding for 2025.
Well, we've been up our guidance three quarters in a row. We've beat our numbers three quarters in a row. So I'm not saying there's not concerns or headwinds or anything like that. Solar, let me just contextualize things for you. Okay. I did my first utility-scale plant in 1993. And in that year, a watt. Okay. In today's dollars, call that $30 a watt. Okay. Then in 2009, so I did the largest solar power system in the United States. It was at the Nellis Air Force Base. President Obama went there. 2009, it was $7. Whatever. Call it $12 a watt, something like that. Today, plants are $1 a watt here. They're $0.50 a watt in India. Okay. The really low cost.
And I could go through all the reasons that that's happened and also speak to you all, all day about all the amazing tech that's gonna keep. Has completely revolutionized power generation. And now that storage is here at scale, you're gonna see finally drank the Kool-Aid, gets it. Why they're saying solar's gonna be the number one source of power generation in the United States within 10 years. Okay. So now solar's gonna do it, all right? Bear with me. Well, what, what are the what are these segments and applications? Well, utility-scale is by far over 50% by gigawatts in Hours because we track and our systems are professionally managed. Within utility-scale, the killer app, tracker. Nextracker's shipped last seven years as our top three competitors combined. And we have a hell of a lot of domain expertise. We are not screwing around.
So we have a world that's powered by renewables. And we have the right culture, the team, and the discipline to execute. And so we're very focused on that. We're super serious. How do we keep winning? And how does our margin keep going up? Because we're totally focused on.
Let me.
Well, you go ahead, please.
Well, actually, since you say it, right, I mean, you've had this incredible run on raising expectations, not just on volumes, and look, but also on margins, right? And I think that this piece is really critical. How do you think about continuing to compound that margin here today? You were starting to get at it, but I think that you've already now pushed things up to the mid-20s here on kind of a longer-term base, baseline. How do you think about keeping going here? I get that these credits are out there, that they're not necessarily reflected. Poor outlook. Again, you could talk about that being medium-term versus long-term. But how do you really elevate things from the mid-20s? I mean, I think a lot of your peers talk about mid-20s as being kinda where they see.
I don't think that they talk a lot about being able to improve. But you're sitting here talking about, "I've got levers to continue to drive that higher. I've got some visibility." And you're speaking with confidence on the back. If I listen to you independent of listening to your peers, it sounds like mid-20s and going.
Well, I just wanna start with also what we've been able to do is. We didn't take, you know, for any given quarter. Like, last quarter, we had a fantastic result from forever. We basically say, "Look, we're optimizing the business annually, and what that's what we're really focused on. We're we have to report quarterly. We optimize the business annually. And we try to have a plan that we can meet despite unknowns when you set the plan by things that happen." Well, who would have thought that Houthis would start shooting missiles at, you know, ships coming through the Suez Canal or that the Panama Canal from a water shortage from an inland lake, which is constraining the amount of ships coming through the canal. Nobody forecasts that stuff. We had dealt with that. We mitigated that.
It impacted us, but not materially because we had, we had built out our supply built in India and other places to be able to make locally if we need to. But we also had those types of things factored into our plan to be able to to how we've been able to maintain this lead share and, you know, have our margin profile grow over time. We, we haven't issued guidance yet for next year. That'll happen after we report next quarter. It comes to the customer. It comes to the customer. How do we deliver? What do they care about? It's very simple. They care about their unlevered return, which is driven by the levelized cost of energy. There's three inputs. The, the, the installed cost of the system, which is CapEx, but also the installed cost. There's how much energy these systems generate. And then.
That's it. So if you optimize those three buckets, the net result is a lower levelized cost of energy, higher unlevered. And it's basically up to us to communicate to the customers, so all the buying influences, not just the owner, but the EPCs, how they're gonna be able to recognize Nextracker. We deliver real hardware, real software, real firmware that delivers real value that's backed up by me and engineers that's proven that allows our customers to validate it. I'll give you some examples. Trackers follow the sun as the sun comes from east. In 1991, with some of my peers, we came up with this algorithm called backtracking, which improved the yield of the systems about 2%-3%. That became very well-known. All the modeling software in my space has that built in. Well, that was good.
But we knew we could do better because that old undulating terrain or diffuse and scattered cloud conditions. So we developed a software at Nextracker called TrueCapture, which has an algorithm that deals with undulating terrain. In order to harvest that, you need an individual row tracker that can articulate with high-degree precision with embedded sensors to make your cell phone, when you move it, it knows the angle. All our trackers have that tech embedded in there. Our top competitor can't do that because all the rows are mechanically linked together. We want all the companies in our space to do really well and perform reliably. But by being able to then really optimize that, we can TrueCapture, one word. On YouTube, see a three-minute video of how it works.
So when we launched that seven or eight years ago, we had already completed trials with measurement and verification data that we had socialized with independent engineers that said, "Hey, here's what we predicted. Here's how it's actually performing." They're like, "How do I model that?" It's like, "Well, here's how we model it. Let us help you develop your own model." And 10 of the 10 top independent engineers in the world on that thing. When we do a commercial offer to the customer, it's like, "Don't believe us. Go to your independent engineer with your data, your site, your weather file, your solar panel. Whatever they say, we will commercial offer." So then we, you know, we started closing business. Today, we have over 250 utility-scale plants using it, which business in our company.
I don't know anybody else that's done that. So, you know, rinse-repeat, whatever the tech is. I talked about this extreme terrain-following tracker. We have over. World. I don't know of any top competitor that has any. Maybe they do. But that reduces capital costs. The other thing it increases the energy. Then for the O&M, we don't have. Row trackers. So it's much easier to do vegetation management, clean the panels, etc. So, you know, what we've done is put ourselves in the customer's shoes, right? How do we deliver more value? And then we operationally, you know, we have operational excellence focus on delivering those things. So. I think it is. But, you know, we've had but you have to understand to be in the shoes of the customer and have domain expertise in the customers and then back try to deliver what they're asking for. That's basically what it's just putting one foot in front of the other. That's what we've done.
It's incredible. Is there any kind of heuristics you could share on how far you can take cost out, i.e., you know, from here on out, what I'm hearing from. Move towards a better product? And again, you know, part of that better product is customers are gonna be willing to pay for it, right? So A. And then B. There's also an ability to bring cost out. And we've seen that, right, as you describe. Think about that here in the medium-term, just the line of sight. You used some of these examples here, but kinda quantifying that back into, and yes, I can kinda do what I can about.
Yeah. There's one thing that we think about when we think about optimizing a solar power plant; we're not just focused on the tracker. Okay. We're also right? And we think about the whole, and we're thinking about the whole electrical system. And then how do we co-optimize these things together? When we launched Nextracker, we at that time, for example, people were mounting solar panels with these really long rails because because that's where the holes were in the frames of the solar panels.
Right.
So we analyzed that. And we said, actually, with because we very much. Using fluid mechanics and wind, wind tunnels and things like that, we were able to, like, really optimize and characterize how the wind behaves in the solar field and compared. To put the holes instead of 1,200 mm to put an extra set of 400 mm, which reduced that rail material by a factor. That's old stuff we did. So we can optimize. We think about optimizing. You don't go to, you know, a car, get a car by buying a chassis. Integrated product. So we think about the solar power system from an integrated standpoint because we've done all these pieces, also the panel providers from a design standpoint to try to optimize.
Nice. Awesome. Okay. So. How you think about the use of cash, right? And, I mean, this is sort of and this is becoming a question for a lot of your peers increasingly. I mean, you know, stock's done very really are our peers.
No. No. But they're talking about what they wanna do strategically. But to be fair, there are other companies out there across the landscape that have cash, right? So, what to do with it. With that said, though, you guys are sitting in a particularly robust place. Let's put it that way.
Okay.
And so, as a consequence, right, the question about earlier, how are you guys thinking about kinda coming back to the street and saying, "Look, we here's our cap allocation plan. Here's how we wanna build it out." And it sounds like adjacent to necessarily where you wanna go, right? I know that you've been peppered with questions over time about, "Do we wanna expand beyond the scope of trackers?" Sounds like that may not necessarily be the core of it. So how do you think about.
I think about it as whatever you do, it has to be prudent, measured, and it's gotta work. Okay. Let's start with our spin-out from Flex. It was still this quarter. It seems like a million years ago, right? So give me a. And yeah, we love our liquidity position with over $800 million. It's very differentiated. Customers know. They see that. And so but we bought a machine learning company eight years ago. It was based on measured data. So copy a little flex on this.
Totally. All right. So what I hear from that is, "Look. We've got a lot of opportunities in the core business. Sounds like you're very focused on, 'Look, let's get these trackers right. Let's deliver on that front. We'll be back to you in due course.'
Fair enough.
All right. Bye. Excuse me. I'll give you a second there. When you think about, you know, returning cash to shareholders just on that front and again, forget, like. You know, buybacks, dividend, all these other kinds of, you know, return of cash, conversations. Again, I get that they're linked. I just wanna hear how you think about it as being part of the premise, right? Solar, for instance, there's a conversation with them about, you know, how and if they decide to return capital, you know? So that's a board decision.
Yeah.
And again, we just did our tax-free spin-out on that.
Definitely. I hear you on that front as well.
Okay. So let's pivot back here a little bit on 45X, right? So, you know, I've how we can go on that front. But 45X is front and center. And this is something you're really able to capture, right? And again, it's ultimately, you know, the customers are enabling it. But captured here. How do you think about your ability to retain and drive margins, you know, sort of in a surplus way over the next few years? I'd love to hear how you would characterize things. I know in your words.
I don't think it's delicate. I think it's a fantastic opportunity. The genesis of 45X, the motivation for us to radically increase what we're making in the United States. Nextracker is operating, executing on that at blinding speed. And so the idea is that we can have domestically produced parts, which have much higher steel costs 'cause there's very high. And other parts. But the 45X allows you to have a locally made tracker that's roughly on par with an overseas-developed delivered tracker. So that's what we're focused on for the customers. And we think we're gonna stay on message on that.
Great. It's just you started this conversation. Maybe we'll start to end it on this. It's how do you think about, you know, more alignment with local customers, right? I think you really found took pride in. Colocated these circular opportunities where you're developing the solar on behalf of customers, and they're developing factories. And sort of, you know, this is the same kinda trend of. Anything that you would offer up on that front in terms of more?
Sure. I think it's a virtuous cycle. Like, I'll give you the, you know, specific example. Last May. A factory opening in Memphis. One of our legacy sub, by the way, Nextracker owns no factories. We like it that way. Not like Apple. We're a technology company but let other people make for us. Great partners. So we had one of our legacy top producers, a European from Europe to Memphis. We had celebrated a factory opening with them, 100,000 sq ft factory, you know, many dozens of people on the floor. That same event, one of our legacy customers, Silicon Ranch Corporation, a top developer in the Southeast, announced a 3 GW master supply agreement for us in the region, the Tennessee Valley region. We had utilities there. And we had the CEO of U. S. Steel speaking, the Big River Steel plant, one of the cleanest steel production facilities in the world, an order of magnitude cleaner from a carbon standpoint than the stuff comes from overseas, which about.
We all celebrated that event. All of everybody I just mentioned spoke. And that provides a huge amount of. You know, we're seeing one of the headwinds you hear about is local permitting. People don't want their stuff made in, you know, far away overseas and dumped into their community. Community's making that stuff. And the utilities love that. And that provides, reduces those headwinds, provides a lot of pull in the regions. There's also a, you know, the complexion of the folks working in the plant reflects the communities. There's a strong, social justice element to it that we're passionate about. And so I'll tell you, I've been doing this. And standing up all this capacity across the United States is one of the most gratifying things I've done.
But also, when we do it overseas, like in India and Brazil. And do a global thing where we arbitrage, you know, you know, a list of 10 things that we can still export from one region to the other. We've exported from the U.S. to, to, Asia and overseas, but we've also imported. So we can do that too. But we're also developing this ecosystem that also inspires to do things like power steel mills as well, which is unbelievable. That, you know, if you look at the carbon problem, folks are like, "Well, the past you can see it right here. Kinda done. Okay? Really, if you look forward, it's gonna happen." You know, the hard stuff's like, "Well, what about, you know, these industrial processes like concrete. In the U.S. using electric arc furnace. We can power steel mills.
80% of the steel made in the U.S. comes from electricity. Overseas, it uses blast furnaces, which use coal and stuff. Can do more. So we've moved a lot of our steel in the U.S. to electric arc. So we're creating more demand. And then we can feed that with solar. And then we can compel to use solar. And then we can bring that to customers and say, "Not only do we have a cleaner steel, but we have a low-carbon tracker 'cause we're using it from a cycle." It's very, very exciting.
That's awesome. Well, look. Let's call it there. I appreciate it. Dan, it's great to see you and your team here. And thank you guys for coming. Appreciate it.
Appreciate it. Thanks a lot, Julien. Thanks.