SolarEdge Technologies, Inc. (SEDG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the 2020 Annual Meeting for SolarEdge Technologies, Inc. Our host for today's call is Zvi Lando. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the call over to your host. Mr. Lando, you may begin.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. The 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders of SolarEdge Technologies is called to order, and the polls are now open. I am Zvi Lando. I will preside as the Chair of today's meeting. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe that a virtual meeting provides greater access to those who wanted to attend this annual meeting. We have designed the format of the annual meeting to provide you with the same rights and opportunities to participate as you would in, in-person meeting. Thank you for joining us. We're very pleased to have you here with us today. For this, I would like now to introduce several people who are here with us today. Ronen Faier, our CFO; Rachel Prishkolnik, who will serve as the Secretary of this meeting; and on the line is our Chairman of the Board, Nadav Zafrir, as well. We will conduct the business portion of our meeting first and answer questions at the end of the meeting. Though we may not be able to answer every question, we will do our best to provide a response to as many as possible. Now let's turn to our formal agenda. The agenda for the meeting and the rules of conduct and procedures for the meeting are available on the virtual meeting platform. We ask that participants abide by these rules. As set forth in the rules of the meeting and in our corporate governance documents, the only matters to be discussed and acted upon by the shareholders at this meeting are set forth in the agenda statements. This meeting is being held pursuant to the notice of the Annual Meeting of Shareholders, which was made available to you along with our proxy statement, our 2019 annual report, the proxy materials first made available on or about April 7, 2020, to the shareholders of record at the close of business on March 20, 2020. The Board of Directors has appointed Rachel Prishkolnik as Inspector for the matters to be voted on at today's meeting. Rachel has presented me with copies of the notice of annual meeting, the proxy statement and the form of proxy, together with proof by affidavit of the mailings by Broadridge on April 7, 2020, to each shareholder of record as of the close of business on March 20, 2020.

ASP has presented me with a list of the shareholders of the company entitled to vote at this meeting as of the record date. This list has been on file at the principal office for the company for inspection during normal business hours prior to the meeting and will be open for inspection throughout this meeting. At this time, any shareholders that are logged in and have not already submitted their vote per share may do so now by clicking on the Vote Here button on your screen. While we allow time for shareholders who haven't already done so to complete their voting, I'd like to remind you that some of the statements made at this meeting may be considered forward-looking. The company cautions its investors that results of future operations may differ from those anticipated. We urge you to review the cautionary statements and other information contained in the company's public filings included in our annual report for fiscal 2019 and our financial report for the first quarter of 2020, which identifies certain factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in any forward-looking statements made during this meeting. I will now report the number of votes represented at this meeting either in person or by proxy. Chairman, a total of 49,598,796 shares of common stock of SolarEdge Technologies, Inc. were outstanding on March 20, 2020, and entitled to be voted at this annual meeting. Holders of shares of common stock are entitled to vote one vote per share. Proxies representing approximately 70.7% of the shares of common stock outstanding and eligible to vote have been received.

Thank you. Based on the Secretary's report, I'll declare a quorum present. The proxies solicited by the Board of Directors designates Zvi Lando and Rachel Prishkolnik to vote the shares represented by those proxies.

The first item on the agenda is the election of directors. Under the company's Articles of Incorporation, the members of the Board of Directors are divided into 3 classes with approximately 1/3 of the directors standing for election year to serve for 3-year terms. The first item of business today is the election of 2 Class II directors each to hold office until the third Annual Meeting of Shareholders following this election and until their successors are elected and duly qualified. The 2 Class II directors standing for election, as nominated by our Board of Directors and is set forth in the proxy statement, are Tal Payne and Marcel Gani. The Board has unanimously recommended a vote for each of the director nominees. Second item on the agenda is the ratification of appointment of independent public accounting firm. Specifically, the Audit Committee has appointed EY as the company's independent registered public accounting firm for the year ending December 31, 2020. The Board has unanimously recommended approval of this proposal as well. The final item of business is the vote on an advisory and nonbinding basis on the compensation of our named executive officers commonly referred to as the Say-on-Pay vote. The Board unanimously recommended approval of this proposal. That concludes the matters to be voted on at this meeting. [Voting]

The polls are now closed. That concludes our formal business. The formal portion of the meeting is now adjourned. I will announce the preliminary result. Mr. Chairman, the preliminary results of the meeting are as follows: On proposal number one, the votes cast for each of the Class II Director nominees represent a majority of those cast for Class II Director nominees. Subject to the confirmation by the inspector of election, the 2 Class II nominees are elected to directors, each to hold office until the third Annual Meeting of Shareholders following their election and until their successors are elected and duly qualified. On proposal number two, the votes cast for EY as registered public accounting firm for the company for the year ending December 31, 2020, exceeds the votes cast against the proposal. Subject to the confirmation by the inspector of election, the stockholders have ratified the appointment of EY. Proposal number three, the votes cast for approval on an advisory basis of the compensation of the company's named executive officers as disclosed in the proxy statement exceed the votes cast against the proposal. We will provide the final voting results as certified by the inspector of election in a Form 8-K filed with the SEC.

Thank you. A quorum has been present, and we have had a legal meeting. The meeting is adjourned. For those present and wish to remain, we will now hold a brief question-and-answer session.

So there's been one question submitted and weeded out. I think Ronen Faier, our CFO, will address it. Your main MLPE competitor is offering continued power production for the home when grid is down. Do you have or will you have something similar? And second, when do you expect to get Solar non-GAAP gross margins back to the 36% to 38% level?

Thank you very much for the question. Starting with the question about the backup when the grid is down, actually, SolarEdge presented backup products already exist in the market. It's already installed with various battery manufacturers with a few thousands or even tens of thousands of systems in the field. Actually, we also announced in the last quarter earnings call our new energy hub product. This is a much more advanced product that is based on the HD wave topology of inverters. It's a product that allows to have much easier installation, very smooth one that allows the compatibility with the battery and with other systems that are controlled with our inverters. And therefore, this is something that exists already, that is working already. And in the future, we also expect to have our own SolarEdge battery coming at the second half of the end of this year. And by that time, we will be able to provide a complete system with both the inverter that allows to have the backup capabilities, both with other batteries and also our battery that will be suitable to work with this product. The second question about getting back with the non-GAAP gross margin. It's important to note that the gross margin of the company hasn't -- or the production hasn't changed dramatically over the last few months since we announced it during the Analyst Day. At that time in the middle of November, we guided that we believe the gross margin should be at the range of 36% plus/minus 1% on the solar business of the company. What we did see in the fourth quarter, and we are seeing also in the second quarter is that in the fourth and in the first quarter of last year and beginning of this year, our gross margins were affected by a large portion of air shipments that drove our margins down. These air shipments were a necessity, given the very fast growth that we experienced that was far beyond our manufacturing capabilities, and we needed to match those capabilities while shortening the time in which we deliver our products. During the second quarter of 2020, we expect to reduce these air shipments to minimum. But due to the effect of COVID-19, we are expected to see higher portion of revenues coming from Europe and the rest of the world that are markets that characterized with lower margins due to changes in the currency rate and also because of the more competitive environment. At the same time, the U.S. market that is characterized with the higher margin is affected a little bit more by COVID. And therefore, we expect, as we said in our guidance, that the portion of the U.S. sales that are usually bringing the margins up are going to be less dominant. We believe that once the COVID-19 effect will be milder or cease to exist, and this is something that, of course, we do not know when, but once we will have approximately 50%-50% of U.S. and non-U.S. revenues, we expect that margin should be, again, in the same or solar margins in the same 36%, give or take 1% as we guided in the Analyst Day.

Thank you very much. There are no further questions. And so we will adjourn the meeting. Thank you, everybody, for joining.

Thank you for joining.

Thank you very much.

This now concludes the meeting. Thank you for joining, and have a pleasant day.