First Solar, Inc. (FSLR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to First Solar's 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mark Widmar, Chief Executive Officer of First Solar. Mr. Widmar, you may begin.

All right. Thank you. I would like to welcome you to the 2021 Annual Meeting of Stockholders of First Solar, Inc. Today's virtual-only meeting is a live webcast. We believe in engaging with our stockholders and hope that this virtual meeting will maximize the participation of stockholders regardless of their location. This technology enables us to reach a larger audience while containing our costs. And in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, also supports engaging with our stockholders in a safe manner. Thank you for taking the time to participate today. On behalf of the Board, I also wish to express thanks to those stockholders who have submitted their proxies in advance. Participants with me today are Alex Bradley, Chief Financial Officer; Caroline Stockdale, Chief People and Communications Officer; Jason Dymbort, General Counsel and Secretary; Mitchell Ennis, Manager, Investor Relations; and John Koppin, Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers; Susan Baker, Director of Shareholder Advocacy, Trillium Asset Management. I call your attention to the rules of conduct set forth for this meeting. These are made available to each stockholder in the meeting center. If you need a copy of the annual report or the proxy statement, these links are also available online in the meeting center. [Operator Instructions] Only registered stockholders are entitled to participate in the business of the meeting. The business to be conducted at this meeting is as follows: To elect directors of the company; to ratify appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as a registered independent public accounting firm of the company; and to vote upon a stockholder proposal requesting a report on steps being taken by the company to enhance Board diversity beyond current levels. Well, we'll be soliciting your questions throughout the meeting, feel free to pose a question at any time. [Operator Instructions] In accordance with the bylaws of the company as appointed by the Chairman of the company's Board of Directors, I will act as Chair of this meeting. In accordance with the bylaws of the company, I hereby appoint Jason Dymbort, the General Counsel and Secretary of the company to act as secretary of the meeting. Christal Goldman of Computershare Trust Company, NA, the transfer agent for the company has been appointed inspector of the election for this meeting. She has taken her oath of office, which we filed with the records of this meeting. I ask Mr. Dymbort to give the secretary's report on the qualifications of this meeting to proceed.

Thank you, Mark. The notice calling this meeting was mailed on April 1, 2021, to stockholders of record as of the close of business on March 23, 2021. And the company has received an affidavit of mailing from the company's transfer agent as to its mailing. The affidavit of mailing is available for inspection by any stockholder and shall be retained with the records of this meeting. Since April 1, 2021, the proxy statement, the form of proxy and the annual report to securityholders have been available to stockholders on the company's website in accordance with the Securities and Exchange Commission's notice and access rules. In addition, the proxies and the certified list of stockholders are in the custody of the inspector of elections. For more than 10 days prior to this meeting, the stockholders list was available for inspection by any stockholder at our corporate headquarters located at 350 West Washington Street, Suite 600 in Tempe, Arizona. Also the company's audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2020, are provided online. Pursuant to the bylaws of the company, the holders of the majority in total voting power of the outstanding capital stock of the company present in person or represented by proxy, constitute a quorum to the company's annual meeting. Based on the inspector of election's preliminary report on attendance and proxy share count, I have been advised by the inspector of election that a quorum is present at this meeting. When delivered, a copy of the inspector of election's report on attendance shall be retained with the records of this meeting. As notice of this meeting has been given in accordance with applicable law and there is a quorum present, all legal requirements for holding this meeting have been satisfied. Following the formal portion of this meeting, Mark, Alex and Caroline will present an overview of the company's business and address questions that are submitted. Please note this presentation and the ensuing question-and-answer session may include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations. We encourage you to view the safe harbor statements contained in today's presentation for a more complete description.

All right. Thank you, Jason. This meeting is lawfully convened and ready to transact business. The proxy statement that was made available to the stockholders in connection with the notice to this meeting set forth the matters to be submitted to a vote of the stockholders. At this time, if you have not voted or wish to change your vote you may do so by clicking on the link provided online. Any stockholder who has already voted and does not want to change his or her vote, need not take any action. [Voting]

We now proceed to the matters to be voted on. The first item to be voted on is the election of directors. The proxy statement lists the director nominees, all of whom are currently serving as directors of the company and all of whom have consented to act as directors for their ensuing year. The director nominees as set forth in the proxy statement are Michael Ahearn, Sharon Allen, Richard Chapman, George Hambro, Kathryn Hollister, Molly Joseph, Craig Kennedy, William Post, Paul Stebbins, Michael Sweeney and Mark Widmar. Are there any comments or questions concerning the elections of the directors? Okay. The next item of business is the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the independent registered public accounting firm of the company to audit our consolidated financial statements for the year ending December 31, 2021. At this time, Mr. John Koppin, a partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers is in attendance and available to answer any questions, and to make a statement if he wishes. Mr. Koppin, do you wish to make a statement?

No. Thank you.

Okay. I will pause now to allow for any comments or questions concerning the ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the company's independent registered public accounting firm. The next item of business is a stockholder proposal submitted by Trillium Asset Management LLC, requesting that the Board of Directors prepare a report by September 2021 at reasonable expense and omitting proprietary information on the steps the company is taking to enhance for diversity beyond current levels. At this time, Ms. Susan Baker, Trillium's Director of Shareholder Advocacy is in attendance, and I'll ask that she present the proposal.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman. My name is Susan Baker, and I'm here on behalf of Trillium Asset Management and the Episcopal City Mission to hereby move Item #3, seeking a report on steps First Solar is taking to enhance Board diversity beyond current levels. The Board opposes the proposal citing past and current actions to promote diversity as the appropriate metric to demonstrate commitment and accountability. Yet, while the company has expanded diversity across many dimensions, including gender, noticeably absent are measures attuned to other diversity demographics, particularly race and ethnicity. There is a clear discomfort related to discussing race and ethnicity in the workplace and the boardroom. There is no avoiding it. This is particularly true where we, as a society, have been told not to notice the color of a person's skin and that race and ethnicity should not matter. Companies can and must learn to be comfortable talking about the way in which race and ethnicity informs a person's experience and perspective that can lead to a stronger culture and better decision making. We are pleased to learn through dialogue with First Solar's management that you are making progress on these issues of equity and belonging in the workplace. The Board can and should lead by example. The proposal's request is to put the company on a clear path by publicly committing to include racial and ethnic diversity candidates on each slate of Board nominees. We are not alone in seeking more information on this topic. Large asset owners are engaging companies on efforts to address racial disparities. Vanguard and BlackRock have stated publicly their interest in seeing companies provide metrics and goals to boost racial diversity. State Street Global Advisors has pledged this year to vote against the chairs of nominating and governance committees that do not disclose their board's racial and ethnic diversity. In 2022, State Street will do the same if the company's Board does not have 1 director from an underrepresented community. Let us not miss them this opportunity to strengthen First Solar's governance practices, committing publicly to include people of color in each candidate pool for Board and senior leadership seats, disclosing gender, racial and ethnic attributes and strategies to reflect the diversity of its workforce and customers. All of these steps, we believe, will set the company on a stronger path, creating a more successful future for First Solar, its employees, shareholders, customers and the communities it serves. Thank you for your time and support.

Are there any comments or questions regarding the shareholder proposal? I hereby declare the polls closed. The formal portion of this meeting is hereby concluded. The inspector of elections will now tabulate the votes, during which time, Mr. Bradley, Ms. Stockdale and I will present an overview of the company's business and answer any questions you may have. We will report the results of the voting before the close of the meeting. Turning to Slide 6 of the presentation. I want to highlight the strong market opportunity before us. As shown in the graph to the left, the amount of PV capacity installed globally is expected to double in the next 5 years. As shown on the graph to the right, PV on an unsubsidized basis in many markets is more competitive than other forms of fossil fuel generation. Accordingly, the market momentum of PV continues to build. And our Series 6 technology, product road map and R&D are differentiators, which we believe will enable us to meaningfully participate in the wave of demand for clean energy. Turning to Slide 7. We have continued to adapt our business model to remain competitive and differentiated in a constantly evolving market through our points of differentiation, which include a competitively advantaged CadTel thin film module technology and a vertically integrated continuous manufacturing process. We have created a resilient business model that better enables us to manage through the periods of growth and uncertainty. Overall, I'm pleased with our manufacturing execution, which stems from our proprietary technology, which enables us to produce a CadTel module within a single factory in a matter of hours. This vertically integrated manufacturing process provides us with end-to-end manufacturing control and supply chain transparency for our customers. By contrast, the largest PV module manufacturers globally produce crystalline-silicon modules using a batch process with multiple steps. None of these manufacturers are fully vertically integrated and rely to varying degrees on third-party sourcing of polysilicon, ingots, wafers and cells. As a result, production of a single crystalline-silicon module requires each of these process steps, several factories and can take multiple days. Turning to Slide 8. As we look to the future, our pace of innovation will be critical to our competitive strength, enabling us to leverage our points of differentiation and capture compelling value for our technology. In early 2021, we provided an updated Series 6 efficiency road map. Through continued operational improvement and execution of our efficiency road map, we increased our average watts per module to 439 watts with a top production bin of 445 watts at the end of 2020. Today, we are consistently achieving a top production bin of 455 watts per module. Leveraging our existing Series 6 tool set, we increased our module form factor by approximately 2% and increased our module efficiency, increasing our top production bin by approximately 10 watts. We anticipate implementing this increase in form factor, which we are calling Series 6 Plus, across the fleet by the fourth quarter of 2021. By the fourth quarter of 2021, we anticipate commencing the initial production of our copper replaced Series 6 or CuRe on our lead line production. The program is expected to not only increase module watts, but also meaningfully improve lifetime energy performance. Accordingly, by the end of 2021, we anticipate our top production bin will reach 460 to 465 watts, with an expected industry leading 30-year warranted degradation rate of 0.2% per year. Through the implementation of our copper replacement program, combined with other ongoing R&D programs, we are aiming to achieve a top production bin of 475 to 480 watts by the end of 2022, which represents an acceleration of our previously planned time line for a 480-watt module in 2023. With a CadTel cell efficiency entitlement in excess of 25%, we see a path to significantly increase our module wattage and efficiency in the near term. With this path to increased efficiency, combined with our degradation, spectral response and temperature coefficient energy advantage, and vertically integrated manufacturing process, we believe the outlook for our technology remains well positioned in the global PV market. Turning to Slide 9. In an industry that sells electrons, and where products are evaluated by the quantity of electrons that they produce, we also seek to differentiate our business model through our commitment to the environmental footprints of our technology, product circularity and supply chain transparency. We call it responsible solar and the principle of this approach include: Firstly, due to our resource efficient manufacturing process, our thin film modules have the lowest carbon in water footprints and fastest energy payback available in the market today. Secondly, we have over a decade of experience in operating high-value PV recycling facilities on a global scale and remain the only solar manufacturer to have global in-house recycling capabilities. This recycling process establishes a circular economy by recovering over 90% of the semiconductor material for reuse in our new First Solar modules, and 90% of the glass for use in new glass container products. Thirdly, our vertically integrated manufacturing process enhances our supply chain transparency and control over the end-to-end manufacturing process. I will now turn the call over to Alex, who will discuss our 2020 and Q1 2021 financial performance.

Thanks, Mark. Turning to Slide 11, I'll review our 2020 performance highlights. 2020 was a strong year with net bookings of 5.5 gigawatts as well as shipments of 5.5 gigawatts, representing a 1:1 book-to-ship ratio. From an operational and technological perspective, we had a number of achievements. Production of 6.1 gigawatts was strong, including 5.9 gigawatts of Series 6. In 2020, the capabilities of our CadTel technology continue to grow as we exited the year with average watts per module of 440 watts, a top production bin of 445 watts. Given PV power plants have an expected useful life of up to 40 years in modules, warranty, durability and reliability and material project economics [indiscernible] of this, early generation First Solar CadTel models that were installed at a National Renewable Energy Laboratory test facility in 1995 are still in operation and demonstrated a 25-year degradation rate of 48 basis points per year. While our manufacturing process, product design, efficiency and warranted long-term degradation rate have all improved significantly over the past 25 years, this result helps us understand the legacy performance baseline and we believe provides further confidence in the superior long-term durability and degradation performance for today's Series 6 product. As a reflection of confidence in our CadTel technology, we extended our limited power output warranty from 25 to 30 years for our Series 6 modules. And Series 6 modules are now protected by the industry's first and only product warranty that specifically covers power loss from cell cracking. From a financial perspective, net sales in 2020 were $2.7 billion, with earnings per share of $3.73. Over the past 3 years, we invested in 6 new Series 6 factories. And despite this significant investment, our healthy balance sheet remains a strategic differentiator. Our net cash position, which includes cash and cash equivalents, restricted cash and marketable securities less debt at year-end 2020 was $1.5 billion. Turning to Slide 12, discuss highlights for the first quarter of 2021. Demand for Series 6 have been robust, with year-to-date net bookings through the April earnings call of 4.8 gigawatts, which includes 2.9 gigawatts since the February earnings call. Operationally, our second Series 6 factory exited its ramp period and our nameplate manufacturing capacity increased to 7.9 gigawatts. We also started commercial production of 455-watt modules of both of our factories in Malaysia, and our fleet-wide average watts module improved to 445 watts for April month-to-date as of the earnings call. Financially, we reported net sales of $803 million, module segment gross margin in line with our Q1 guidance and earnings per share of $1.96, which includes the completion of our U.S. project development and North American O&M business sales. And finally, our net cash position of $1.5 billion remains strong despite adding 6 new Series 6 factories. So overall, I'm pleased with the strong start to the year. I'll now turn the call over to Caroline to discuss our approach to diversity, inclusion and belonging.

Thank you, Alex. Diversity for us is global, and it means more than race and gender. It's creating an environment where different voices are encouraged and heard. And for us, it includes, but is not limited to, some of the following, and has local, regional definition: race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, generation, disability, personality type and thinking style. As a global business, we want to create an atmosphere where multiple voices are heard, and their opinions are valued and considered and to ingrain this in the company culture. We are focused on meeting the diverse needs of our associates and leveraging that diversity to produce better products and service. We see, moving to the next slide, Slide 15. We see the work towards relevant and meaningful diversity and inclusion as a transformation. It's not just an initiative or a program. It's about how our entire company operates. And to that end, we have clear goals and deliverables, and we empower and give responsibility and ownership to line employees and local organizations while providing centralized monitoring and support.

All right. Thank you, Caroline. The floor is now open for any questions you may have. [Operator Instructions] Are there any questions that any of the stockholders would like to ask at this time?

Mark, there have not been any questions submitted by stockholders.

If there are no questions or comments, I'm advised by the inspector of elections that the tallies are now available, and I will ask the secretary of the meeting to read them.

On the proposal regarding election of directors, the inspector advises that each nominee recommended by the Board of Directors has received the majority of the votes cast with respect to such candidates' election. Therefore, each of the 11 nominees has been duly elected. On the proposal concerning the ratification of the appointment of the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31, 2021, the inspector advises that 84,102,515 shares or approximately 93.4% of the shares represented in voting on this proposal have voted for ratification of the appointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the independent registered public accounting firm for the company and its consolidated subsidiaries for 2021. On a stockholder proposal requesting a report on steps being taken by the company to enhance Board diversity beyond current levels, the inspector advises that 67,638,682 shares or approximately 90.75% of the shares represented in voting on this proposal, have voted in favor of approving the adoption of the plan. Accordingly, the proposal has passed. Mr. Chairman, the final results of the stockholder vote reflecting all proxies received through the close of the meeting and any votes cast during this meeting will be included in the final report of the inspector of election and will be published on a Form 8-K to be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and will be available upon request.

All right. Thank you, Jason. This meeting is now concluded. I want to thank you all for attending today's meeting and for your support you have shown First Solar. Thank you.

Thank you. This concludes the meeting. You may now disconnect.