Earnings call transcript: Nextracker Q1 2025 beats earnings and revenue forecasts

Published 29/07/2025, 23:14
Earnings call transcript: Nextracker Q1 2025 beats earnings and revenue forecasts

Nextracker Inc. (NXT) delivered a strong performance in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, significantly exceeding earnings and revenue expectations. The company reported an earnings per share (EPS) of $1.16, far surpassing the forecasted $0.61, marking a 90.16% surprise. Revenue reached $864 million, also beating the anticipated $632.94 million by 36.51%. Following the earnings release, Nextracker’s stock experienced a slight increase in aftermarket trading, rising by 0.21% to $65.55. According to InvestingPro, the company maintains a "GREAT" financial health score of 3.74, with current trading levels aligned with its Fair Value.

Key Takeaways

  • Nextracker’s Q1 EPS and revenue both exceeded forecasts by significant margins.
  • The company achieved a 20% year-over-year revenue growth.
  • Strategic acquisitions in robotics and AI were highlighted as growth drivers.
  • Global market share increased from 23% to 26%.
  • Stock saw a modest aftermarket increase following the earnings announcement.

Company Performance

Nextracker demonstrated robust performance in Q1, with a 20% increase in revenue compared to the previous year. The company’s strategic focus on innovation and expansion contributed to its strong results. Nextracker’s leadership in the solar tracker market remains unchallenged, as it continues to expand its manufacturing capabilities and increase its global market share.

Financial Highlights

  • Revenue: $864 million, a 20% year-over-year increase.
  • Earnings per share: $1.16, significantly above the forecast of $0.61.
  • Adjusted EBITDA: $215 million, a 23% increase.
  • Adjusted gross margin: 33%.
  • Cash position: $743 million, with no debt.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Nextracker’s actual EPS of $1.16 surpassed the forecast of $0.61 by 90.16%. Revenue also exceeded expectations, reaching $864 million compared to the forecasted $632.94 million, a 36.51% surprise. This performance marks a notable improvement over previous quarters, reflecting the company’s effective growth strategies.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, Nextracker’s stock price rose by 0.21% in aftermarket trading, reaching $65.55. This moderate increase indicates a positive investor sentiment, driven by the company’s strong financial results and strategic initiatives. The stock has demonstrated impressive momentum, delivering a 31.8% return over the past six months and approaching its 52-week high of $67.87. InvestingPro subscribers have access to 12 additional ProTips and comprehensive analysis of NXT’s market performance.

Outlook & Guidance

For the full fiscal year 2026, Nextracker projects revenue between $3.2 billion and $3.45 billion, with adjusted EBITDA ranging from $750 million to $810 million. The company also forecasts adjusted diluted EPS between $3.96 and $4.27, supported by analysts’ consensus forecast of $3.92 per share. Nextracker’s backlog exceeds $4.75 billion, providing a strong foundation for future growth. The company’s robust outlook is reflected in recent analyst actions, with five analysts revising their earnings estimates upward for the upcoming period.

Executive Commentary

CEO Dan Sugar highlighted the company’s strategic direction, stating, "We’re scaling our platform to address this rapidly expanding opportunity." President Howard Wenger emphasized the competitiveness of solar power, noting, "Solar power is now $15 per megawatt hour, 1.5¢ per kilowatt hour."

Risks and Challenges

  • Potential policy uncertainties in the U.S. could impact future operations.
  • Market saturation in the solar industry may pose growth challenges.
  • Supply chain disruptions could affect manufacturing and distribution.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the impact of the OBBA reconciliation bill and safe harbor provisions. Nextracker’s management addressed these concerns, emphasizing their strategic acquisitions in robotics and AI to mitigate potential risks.

Full transcript - Nextracker Inc (NXT) Q1 2026:

Jay Son, Conference Operator: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for standing by. My name is Jay Son, and I will be your conference operator today. Today’s call is being recorded. I would like to welcome everyone to NextTracker’s First Quarter Fiscal Year twenty twenty six Earnings Call. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a Q and A session.

At this time, for opening remarks, I would like to pass the call over to Ms. Sarah Li, Head of Investor Relations. Sarah, you may begin.

Sarah Li, Head of Investor Relations, NextTracker: Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to NextTrapper’s first quarter fiscal year twenty twenty six earnings call. I’m Sarah Lee, NextTrapper’s Head of Investor Relations, and I’m joined by Dan Sugar, our CEO and Founder Howard Winger, our President and Chuck Boynton, our CFO. Following brief prepared remarks, we will transition to a Q and A session. As a reminder, there will be a replay of this call posted on the IR website along with the earnings press release and shareholder letter.

Today’s call contains statements regarding our business, financial performance and operations, including our business and our industry that may be considered forward looking statements, and such statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. Those statements are based on current beliefs, assumptions and expectations and speak only as of the current date. For more information on those risks and uncertainties, please review our earnings press release, shareholder letter and our SEC filings, including our most recently filed quarterly report on Form 10 Q and annual report on Form 10 ks, which are available on our IR website at investors.nextstracker.com. This information is subject to change, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward looking statements as a result of new information, future events or changes in our expectations. Please note we will provide GAAP and non GAAP measures on today’s call.

The full non GAAP to GAAP reconciliations can be found in the appendix to the press release and the shareholder letter as well as the financial section of the IR website. And now I will turn the call over to our CEO and Founder. Dan?

Dan Sugar, CEO and Founder, NextTracker: Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. I’m pleased to report our strong start to fiscal year twenty twenty six. Building on the momentum we established last year, Next Tracker continues to deliver consistent growth and strong financial performance, driven by technological leadership, operational excellence and relentless focus on customer value. We delivered robust financial results across all key metrics. Q1 revenue grew 20% year over year to $864,000,000 and adjusted EBITDA increased 23% to $215,000,000 Our backlog hit a new record of over $4,750,000,000 reflecting healthy global demand and an increasingly strong competitive position.

We also continue to generate solid cash flow and strengthen our balance sheet. We’re particularly pleased with our strong Q1 performance considering the evolving U. S. Policy environment. Our ability to consistently execute in challenging conditions speaks to the strength of our team, differentiated products and the quality of our customer relationships.

One of the most impactful developments in the quarter was the passage of the OBBBA reconciliation bill, which addressed a significant portion of the uncertainty surrounding solar manufacturing and investment tax credits. While further clarification is expected, particularly around treasury guidance and safe harbor provisions, we believe NextTrakr is well positioned by virtue of our deep backlog and highly flexible U. S. Supply chain. We’ve worked tirelessly with our suppliers to open and expand over 25 manufacturing facilities across The United States.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reported solar accounted for more than 80% of new U. S. Generation capacity in 2024. Globally, solar contributed more than twice as much incremental electricity as the next largest energy source. And looking forward, the International Energy Agency predicts that solar will become the largest source of global electricity supply within the next decade.

These powerful trends reinforce our conviction solar, and Next Tracker in particular, will play a central role in the future of energy. We’re scaling our platform to address this rapidly expanding opportunity and announced this morning three strategic acquisitions in the fields of robotics and AI. These technologies, from autonomous inspection and robotic cleaning to three d site mapping, integrate directly with our control and monitoring systems to help customers optimize performance,

Chuck Boynton, CFO, NextTracker: reduce O and M costs and lower risk. This initiative exemplifies our strategy of combining breakthrough engineering with digital innovation to deliver more value across the full life cycle of the project.

Dan Sugar, CEO and Founder, NextTracker: As we move beyond being the global leader in solar trackers and evolve into a broader technology platform for utility scale solar, we’re excited to provide a more detailed look into our strategy at our upcoming Capital Markets Day on November 12 at our headquarters. With that, I’ll turn it over to our President, Howard Wenger, to go deeper into our Q1 performance and the exciting developments across our technology portfolio.

Howard Wenger, President, NextTracker: Thank you, Dan. Q1 was another great quarter for NextTracker, marked by strong customer bookings and backlog and excellent operational delivery. This forward momentum continues to be driven by a flight to quality in the market. As Dan noted, our performance is especially encouraging given the ongoing U. S.

Policy dynamics and further underscores the strength of our global leadership position. According to Wood Mackenzie, NextTracker is now the number one tracker provider worldwide for the tenth consecutive year, increasing our market share to 26% during 2024. We’re in the leading market position in North America, Latin America and Oceania, which includes Australia. We are pleased to report we are also the top provider in Europe, highlighted by flagship projects like the five fifty megawatt Auricchio solar power plant in Greece, one of the largest in the region. Moving to pricing, costs and project timing.

In Q1, pricing for Next Tracker was generally stable and the company continued to manage costs well. Project timing was also stable and manageable on a portfolio basis with some projects accelerating and some pushing out consistent with previous quarters. Our backlog and large project portfolio provided excellent visibility and helped reduce uncertainty. On the product side, we continue to experience strong demand for our core MX Horizon tracker systems and TrueCapture technology. Our recently introduced Hail Pro system and expanded XTR tracker series are seeing rapid adoption with quarter over quarter sales up 4322%, respectively.

Hail Pro is winning in the market due to its ability to reduce both hail damage risk and insurance costs. This is yet another example of innovation driven by customer feedback, and in this case, the insurance industry. We are pleased by the positive traction we are seeing as our technology platform expands to a more complete solution, including adding foundations in EVOS to our industry leading tracker systems. Our foundation products and services continue to gain momentum with cumulative sales of NX Earth Trust now over one gigawatt. We are also excited by customer reaction to our new EVOS solutions, which we began selling during the quarter.

We are optimistic about our ability to significantly scale our EVOS production. As Dan mentioned, we recently executed a series of strategic technology acquisitions, extending our platform and capabilities in robotics, automation and AI. This includes acquiring the company’s on-site technology in Amir Robotics and the IP from SensHawk. These acquisitions complement our own internal efforts by incorporating ground based robots and drones to provide incremental customer value across the full project lifecycle. On-site’s autonomous inspection robots and field based detection technologies are already in use and available for immediate sale to U.

S. Customers. We’ll be providing detailed global rollout plans for these new products at a later date. To lead us in this rapidly emerging area, we have appointed Doctor. Francesco Varelli as our new Chief AI and Robotics Officer.

Doctor. Barelli is a globally recognized leader in AI and predictive model based control systems. He brings decades of experience in autonomous technologies, and he played a key role in developing our TruCapture program. We’re very excited about the potential of AI, robotics and automation to further enhance the full customer experience and help drive project life cycle value. With that, I will now turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Chuck Boynton, to go over our financial results in more detail.

Chuck Boynton, CFO, NextTracker: Thank you, Howard, and good afternoon, everyone. I’m pleased to share our financial results for our 2026. Q1 revenue was $864,000,000 representing year over year growth of 20%. Q1 adjusted EBITDA expanded to $215,000,000 a 23% increase year over year. This translates to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 25%, which was an increase of approximately 100 basis points compared to the previous year.

Our adjusted gross margin was 33%. We recognized 150 basis point benefit in Q1 for 45X related to historical shipments. We continue to believe that our gross margins should be in the low 30s with OpEx in the 9% to 10% range yielding operating margins in the low 20s. On the cash side, we generated $70,000,000 in adjusted free cash flow during the quarter, down from the same period last year, primarily driven by growth investments in capital expenditures and working capital. We see strong cash generation throughout the year with over $450,000,000 of free cash flow.

We exited the quarter with $743,000,000 in total cash with no debt. Our strong balance sheet and cash flow generation remain competitive advantages. Moving on to our outlook. Looking ahead, our outlook assumes the current U. S.

Policy environment remains in effect and in addition that permitting processes and timelines will remain consistent with historical levels. As Dan mentioned, we are closely monitoring potential updates to safe harbor provisions and other regulatory actions, which could impact project timing, customer investment behavior and our financial results. For the full year fiscal twenty twenty six, we expect revenue to be in the range of 3,200,000,000.0 to $3,450,000,000 with relatively balanced quarterly revenue for the remainder of the year. Adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of seven fifty million to $810,000,000 and adjusted diluted EPS to be in the range of $3.96 to $4.27 per share. Our increased outlook is grounded in several key factors, including the strength and diversity of our backlog, a continued flight to quality among solar developers and the deep capability and commitment of our global team.

With that, we’re happy to answer any questions you may have. Operator?

Jay Son, Conference Operator: Our first question is from Dimple Gosai with Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Dimple Gosai, Analyst, Bank of America: Thank you. Thanks for taking the question. Can you please discuss what conversations have looked like with developers post the OBBB? Are they kind of in wait and see mode? And maybe you can also just expand on bookings momentum.

I know you’ve grown from what you previously described as significantly higher than $4,500,000,000 to 4,700,000,000.0 this quarter. But is that pace of bookings picking up? Or any commentary there would really be helpful. You.

Howard Wenger, President, NextTracker: Hi, Gippel. This is Howard Winker. So we are in touch with our owner developers closely. And let me just start off by saying we’re really happy with the company’s performance and pleased with the quarter and the outlook for the year. And what we’re hearing is that they’re feeling good about their portfolios.

And as you know, we team up with tier one developers who are quite sophisticated. They’re able to safe harbor their projects and perfect their projects. And we feel what we’re hearing and what we’re seeing is that our backlog is solid. No projects are dropping out, and, you know, we’re we’re looking forward to continuing to execute. And the sales team did a great job in the quarter.

We had another sequential, growth in our backlog quarter over quarter, fifteenth quarter in a row. And so we’re seeing a good set of demand signals across the globe. So feeling very good about where we’re at at the at at this moment.

Dimple Gosai, Analyst, Bank of America: Thank you for that.

Jay Son, Conference Operator: Our next question is from Praneeth Satish with Wells Fargo. Your line is now open.

Praneeth Satish, Analyst, Wells Fargo: Thanks. Good afternoon. Maybe I’ll touch on the the new business here, the venture into AI and and robotics. I I I know you’ll probably offer more details, at the Analyst Day, but, just just generally, are you planning to to offer these solutions as a service with the recurring revenue stream, or will this be primarily an equipment sale model? And then how do these robotic acquisitions integrate with your existing, TrueCapture software?

Are there any synergies here given that you’ll have all these extra data points? And can this all be wrapped up as one service?

Dan Sugar, CEO and Founder, NextTracker: Hi, Pradeep. Dan Sugar here. We’re so excited about the suite of robotics technologies that we’ve just launched. In terms of the

Howard Wenger, President, NextTracker: go to

Dan Sugar, CEO and Founder, NextTracker: market, the there’s a range of solutions that we brought in today. For example, we have drones. We’ve actually we completed the acquisition of this technology multiple quarters ago. That’s already being used. That’s integrated into our existing true capture technology where from using the technology from SenseFalk that we acquired, we’re using that to actually create a complete as built digital twin of the site being used in our TrueCapture technology that’s been implemented for a very long time, already in use, and that’s happening.

And that goes with our true capture. We have these other technologies with robotic cleaning and with the on-site technologies where we have both a ground based robot and a stationary camera that detects a fire and and other parameters on-site. So how that’s integrated in, we’ll be getting into greater detail later. But these technologies are well launched. They’re either being offered commercially today or they’re in fairly advanced stage of productization.

Unidentified: Thanks.

Jay Son, Conference Operator: Our next question is from Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.

Brian Lee, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Just had two. One, Howard, going back to the comment around backlog, you said it did grow quarter on quarter.

I know you changed kind of the language semantics a bit. So I wanted to confirm that that was the case. It did grow. And I guess that implies bookings were $900,000,000 maybe close to $1,000,000,000 again. And curious if anything in the quarter you saw pauses from customers due to policy uncertainty or vice versa, any pull forwards to try to get ahead of the bill passage?

And I had a follow-up.

Howard Wenger, President, NextTracker: Got it. Brian, so yes, I want to confirm our backlog grew quarter over quarter. Your math, you can do the math in terms of and you just did it in terms of what we booked in lease and and get in the in the ballpark. We did that’s a number that we don’t disclose. But, yes, our backlog grew quarter on quarter for the fifteenth consecutive quarter for the company.

Happy about that. And what we’re seeing is the pipeline is actually growing for the company. As you know, we have a global business, and we’re still, you know, roughly tracking on the one third, two thirds as we grow, two thirds being North America and one third rest of the world. And we’re not seeing pull ins per se in when we talk about North America and The US in particular, we’re not seeing pull ins on projects, like, in a very broad systematic way. We’re seeing some pull ins.

We’re seeing some push outs, and those are I’d characterize those as normal because we have a broad portfolio of projects, and just that’s the way project schedules are. Some can pull in from one quarter to the next, some can push out. It’s very normal facts fact pattern with respect to operations. Now there is we expect clarity on the treasury guidance coming up in a few weeks. That could change some customer behavior.

We don’t know, and we’ll know then. And we are seeing some limited amount of safe harbor interest, and we’re prepared to address that with our very robust supply chain and flex capacity. So hopefully, that gives you more color, and you had a follow on, Brian.

Brian Lee, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: No. That’s great. I appreciate all that color. Very helpful. And if you could bear with me just one more math question, and then I’ll get out of here.

On the IRA credit impact or vendor rebate, I think it was 11 percentage points on gross margin this quarter. That was up significantly like 300 to 400 basis points incremental versus what you’ve seen in prior quarters. What’s kind of driving that? Because I did see international revenue growth was better than The U. S.

This quarter. So curious how that worked out this quarter to be such a higher impact and then how we should think about that number in relation to gross margin maybe going forward? Is it going to stay at that level? Is it flat line? Does it go down?

Thanks, guys.

Chuck Boynton, CFO, NextTracker: Yes. Thanks, Brian. This is Chuck. So we did have a really strong quarter. 45x was a little higher than normal.

I mentioned in the prepared remarks about 150 basis points. That’s a little more than $10,000,000 incremental benefit. And that’s really relating back to kind of vendor reconciliations going back the last couple of years. Looking forward, we expect it to be, call it, 9% to 10% of total revenue. That’s a little higher than it’s been.

That’s partially driven by U. S. Demand for U. S.-made products. So we’re actually delivering more U.

S. Product to our customers. And with that, the costs are a little higher, but the 45x credit helps to offset that. So I do want to call out and say thank you to our operations team. They have just done a phenomenal job.

Our on time delivery is incredible, and we’re delivering local around the world in The U. S, a real hallmark, working with our manufacturing partners to deliver really compelling U. S.-made content that does generate 45x credit benefit offsetting higher costs. Thank you.

Brian Lee, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: All right. Thanks, guys. I’ll pass it on.

Jay Son, Conference Operator: Our next question is from Philip Shen with ROTH Capital Partners. Your line is now open.

Philip Shen, Analyst, ROTH Capital Partners: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. First one is on your backlog. What percentage of the backlog is safe harbored? And then can you talk separately on what kind how much risk there is with the, Trump executive order expected to be released, August 18?

And then finally, as it relates to the interior memo, where the secretary has to review all the permitting, for projects that touch federal land. When you look at your backlog, what kind of impact could that have, depending on how they enforce that? Thanks.

Dan Sugar, CEO and Founder, NextTracker: Hey, Phil. Dan Sugar here. Howard and I will tag team on this. You know, we were thinking about this, in the preparation for this call. We were thinking as a run up over the last, let’s say, year or even longer, you know, what what percentage was safe harbored?

You know, when we ask our tier one customers, how do they feel about the integrity of their pipeline, their projects? They feel what they feel good about it because they take harbored under, you know, the rules that exist. So I’d say so when you ask the question, I think a lot of projects in The United States benefit from that, but that’s taking the longer view on the safe harbor. Howard, do you wanna pick it up from there? Sure.

Howard Wenger, President, NextTracker: I mean, you we heard on NextEra’s call that they feel good about their portfolio through 2029, and that’s their indicative they’re one of the leading developers in the country, but we and we work with them and others, tier one customers like them, who echo what Dan said. They feel very good about their their pipelines. They’re able to manage it from from a safe harbor perspective. And so we believe that a very high percentage of our backlog that’s US is safe harbor, to answer your question directly. And, like, the, like, vast majority of it.

Okay? That’s that’s the way that’s based on the information that we have. As far as risk, again, I’d point to the Nexera call. There you know, we don’t it’s early to digest what the interior department, you know, guidelines are and what the treasury is gonna come out with in a few weeks. And so we’re I think the industry is still digesting it, but they’re what we’re hearing is that it’s manageable.

You know? That the early read on this is that it’s manageable going forward and that they’re through the OBBB, which was the the the bill that was passed, that provided that was actually a good outcome, we think, for based on our close proximity with customers that is providing the bridge that’s needed to beyond, you know, the incentive platform that we’ve been on for the last couple of years. So that should give you I think we’ve answered your questions, Phil. Thank you.

Unidentified: Great. Thanks.

Jay Son, Conference Operator: Our next question is from Julien Dumoulin DUMOULIN Smith SMITH:] with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Unidentified: Hey, good afternoon, team. Thanks for the time. Let me just continue on that same line of thinking here. Just first, higher level question. I mean, how do you think about the cadence of the overall industry?

If you think about both safe harbor dynamics that you’re seeing on pull in as well as potentially some of that safe harbor material falling off 29, 2030. How do you think about how that squares with the timing of orders and a potential eventual pickup with backlog activity? Clearly, not as meaningful here at the very near term, but how does it square with what you’re expecting here 2025 through, call it, the next four years timing wise?

Howard Wenger, President, NextTracker: So the connection was a little bit janky there, but we I think we got the gist of it, Julien. Thank you. So so we think look. One thing that we did is under Dan’s leadership, honestly, and with the ops team working hand in glove for the last few years is really spin up The U. S.

Domestic supply chain. We are the first company to come out with 100% domestic tracker. We’ve only increased capacity since then. We have over 25 facilities feeding our U. S.

Business. And so we’re in really good position with a lot of flex capacity, very significant capacity. And the reason why we point that out is should the rules dictate that, let’s just say, the safe harbor requirement goes up from 5%, hypothetically, we don’t know, but let’s just say it was double to 10%. We’re in position to serve our customers with additional safe harbor capability. And so, yeah, there could be some you can call it pull in.

You can call it whatever you want, but there could be additional shipments by NextTracker depending on the guidance that comes out.

Dan Sugar, CEO and Founder, NextTracker: Yeah. I’ll just pile on to Howard’s comment that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has mapped that shows last year over 80% of the power capacity installed in The United States was solar. And Lawrence Berkeley Lab, which is funded by the US Department of Energy, calculated almost 7,000 projects are solar and solar plus storage. You know, there’s this incredible need for power in The United States, period. You see it dominating the news, the headlines.

People are talking about, you know, other ways to make power, and there’s limited availability of gas turbines, nuclear’s way out there in terms of time frame. And solar is available, affordable, and has no fuel risk. And so we also see now storage in ERCOT and California at incredible scale, keeping the lights on. You can look at the demand, you know, today and from last week online and see that with batteries, the solar power is available till 10:11PM when folks are going to sleep and the power drops. So we think that this is going to be an enduring story.

We have a very compelling manufacturing and jobs made in USA, energy dominance, facts on the ground situation. We see policymakers responding to that. So we see The US market, despite a lot of fluidity, as it’s been up into the right. Our backlog reflects that, our bookings reflect that, and our revenues reflect that. Meanwhile, we’re continuing to expand overseas.

As Howard mentioned, we achieved leadership in Europe as the number one provider in Europe, and we saw our total market share globally increase from 23% in 2023 to 26% in 2024. That’s over double digit increase globally. So we’re really focused on serving the global market. Being global manufacturer provides tremendous strength.

Unidentified: Can I start with a microw here? Just with respect to the diversification comment from last quarter, about onethree over five years. Obviously, you guys have a Analyst Day target out in November here. Can you speak a little bit more clearly to the different pieces that you’re expecting on diversification? I know you kinda said there are couple of them out there in the market at this point with fintech, etcetera.

But any broader set or more specific sense you can sort of feather into that one right here as a preview?

Dan Sugar, CEO and Founder, NextTracker: Michael, your connection’s a bit spotty. Your connection is quite spotty, but we’ll speak to the growth in non tracker technologies. So let’s do a quick review. We acquired a machine learning company about ten years ago called Brightbox. We built a fantastic software business that created tremendous value for customers, helped with stickiness with our our tracker, overall value proposition, improved the yield trackers.

Howard Wenger, President, NextTracker: It also

Dan Sugar, CEO and Founder, NextTracker: demonstrated that NextTracker knows how to work with companies that we acquire and get the get the technology integrated in a way that’s accretive accretive. Then last summer, we acquired two foundation companies, and we’ve introduced those products in

Chuck Boynton, CFO, NextTracker: a major

Dan Sugar, CEO and Founder, NextTracker: launch. That suite of products is going very well with incredible customer uptake. We’re ahead of plan, from a sales standpoint, and we’re integrating the ops. Very pleased with how that’s going. So far, that that those technologies have been focused in The United States.

We do plan on launching the foundation technologies in selected international markets next year. The true capture software suite I mentioned a moment ago has been offered globally for many years and, in fact, is is on the uptake internationally. Now the last quarter, we products. That’s we’re really focused initially in The United States, but we’ll be at the correct time, ramping that internationally as well. And the acquisitions and new businesses we announced today in robotics, both the on-site evaluation withdraw and owner asset management class.

We’re going to be rolling that out both geographically and from a product diversification standpoint over time. And we’ll definitely be unpacking that further at the Capital Markets Day in November.

Jay Son, Conference Operator: Our next question is from Ben Kallo with Baird. Your line is now open.

Sarah Li, Head of Investor Relations, NextTracker0: Hey guys, thanks for taking my question and good afternoon. Just maybe we talked a lot about safe harboring, but if you can have any color on past the ITC expiration, any kind of product development there. It’s a long ways away, how you guys think about that if how first agreements will respond in time, you know, to make projects go forward or pencil out. And then just maybe another question that that you you’ve talked a little bit about, but on the robotics and AI acquisitions, is do you think this is, like, an add on to the customer wallet? Or should we think about it?

Or or maybe the question is how you price it? Is it against cost? Or is it additional cost on top of a project? Thank you.

Howard Wenger, President, NextTracker: Thanks, Ben. This is Howard. So on part one, pass the ITC. Look, let’s just step back and take stock of where solar’s been over the last thirty, forty years, right? We first had to validate that it was reliable and technically sound.

We’ve done that as an industry. We then had to prove that it could economically compete. We’ve done that to the point now where if you go to The Middle East, solar power is now $15 per megawatt hour, 1.5¢ per kilowatt hour. Okay. That’s an unsubsidized market, free market.

NetTracker has was the first company to be in The Middle East. We’re there. We have an office. We are in great position. We can compete in that market.

And when we have a differentiated value proposition that we just keep building with these acquisitions and our own internal organic efforts. And so what you’re seeing is that solar power, as Dan mentioned, is the fastest growing, most impactful new energy technology going in in The United States and around the world. If you look past the ITC, if we’re on a level playing field, the industry can compete. When you add storage to the equation, it’s really an unbeatable firm power, dispatchable power combination. So we feel, you know, in in our engagement with very large owner developers who their their their companies and their investors are pouring billions of dollars into them.

Why? Because they have a durable value proposition that can compete to provide energy to the fast growing electricity markets in The US, and they just needed a bridge. And so we we’re we’re in the middle of that bridge right now. We think we’re in good stead with the OPPD. We’re gonna get more guidelines.

But beyond that, we’re it’s durable, and it’s unstoppable, and we feel really good about it. And that’s from an industry and company perspective for solar power. Okay. AI and pricing. So right now, the way we’re thinking about it, especially when you think about on-site, who’s out in the market and has robots and customers in seven states, in a couple dozen sites, it’s real technology being deployed and being paid for.

It’s done what we’re migrating towards is more of a robot as a service model where there’s recurring revenue for those services, and it’s in addition to the services that we provide today. But it’s part of our whole platform development and constellation. Dan talked about tracker, which is core, and we’re investing a lot in tracker. We’ve tripled our r and d spend in the last three years, a lot of that going to our core tracker technology, okay? And then we’re building around that with these additional acquisitions, including the robotics.

Thanks, Sam.

Sarah Li, Head of Investor Relations, NextTracker0: Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Jay Son, Conference Operator: Our next question is from Dylan Masano with Wolfe Research.

Sarah Li, Head of Investor Relations, NextTracker1: Just on backlog, can you give us an update on how much of current backlog you expect to ship over, call it, the coming six to eight quarters? I think that’s a metric you’ve shared before. And then quick follow-up on BenTech. When you’re talking about building out the EVOS capacity, are you looking to actually expand the current product offering beyond the products you currently make to potentially compete more directly with some of the leading EVOS players? Thank you.

Chuck Boynton, CFO, NextTracker: Dylan, this is Chuck. It really hasn’t changed much. It was a metric we used to publish. We stopped because it kind of was the same each quarter, call it, high 80s, low 90s would be shipped over the next eight ish quarters. Not much movement there, and we stopped disclosing that because it just wasn’t that meaningful.

And the second question on BenTech products, we’ll have, Howard answer that.

Howard Wenger, President, NextTracker: Okay. We offer two product lines through BenTech. They cover 100% of the use cases currently in the solar industry, And one is based on combiner box approach and one’s based on a trunk plus approach with load break disconnects. And so we are one of the reasons why we really like BendTech was that they had a robust product development effort. They have new products in their pipeline.

We’re helping them bring those to the market, and we expect to be adding to the products point a, to what is offered today. And point b, we’re we’re working with them to scale so that we can better match the volume that XTRACR has. We have an incredible footprint in The US and then and then First US and then the rest of world. So there’s a lot of what we, you know, upside to the EVOS business for NextTracker. Thanks, Dylan.

Dan Sugar, CEO and Founder, NextTracker: Great. Thank you.

Jay Son, Conference Operator: Our next question is from Amit Dharth with BMO. Your line is now open. Amit, your line is is open.

Dan Sugar, CEO and Founder, NextTracker: Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to ask you, maybe pivoting away from the executive order, on section the section two thirty two tariff investigation, I was just wondering what sort of kind of feedback you’ve got from your, your customers on that and kinda given your ability to kinda maybe work with a greater array of different solar modules, that might be better positioned to kinda respond to that. Have you seen kind of any kind of additional interest as a result of that? Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks, Amit. We’re flexible to work with a wide range of solar panels. NetTracker has spent a lot of you know, contribute a lot to making these panels compatible with our tracker. If you actually pull the specifications of solar panel, you’ll see that almost every panel has a 400 millimeter hole in the frame.

That came from NextTracker about twelve years ago, thirteen years ago. And so we have a very strong product management function that closely coordinates with the their counterparts of these module companies. It’s great to see the growth in the solar panel manufacturing industry here in The United States. There’s over 30 companies that have actually made and shipped solar panels in The US, which is kind of staggering, from where it was five years ago. So we’re it’s great to see that, and to see the expansion of both legacy players and new players.

So we’re we’re very excited about that that growth. Thank you, Amit. Thank you.

Jay Son, Conference Operator: Our next question is from Joseph Osha with Guggenheim. Your line is now open.

Sarah Li, Head of Investor Relations, NextTracker2: Thank you very much. Two questions for you. First, looking at Ventec, I’m wondering if we might see you start to use that platform to do a completely custom harnesses without insulation piercing connectors? What the thought might be there? And then secondly, looking at some of these acquisitions you’ve just completed, you know, we do see some companies out there like like Terabase, you know, really seeking to sort of automate the whole assembly process and and all of that.

I do I kinda sense that you’re maybe moving that direction with these acquisitions that that you’re making? Thank you.

Howard Wenger, President, NextTracker: K. I’ll do part a, and and Dan will do part b. This is Howard. So for Ventec, we’re not, as I mentioned before, we’re able to provide, both platforms that are predominantly used in The US, large scale solar industry for wiring systems. And we’re not, at this time, prepared to talk about some of the development that we’re doing, the area that you discussed, which is the on the custom harnesses.

But thank you. Thank you for the question. Dan, you want to talk about Thank you.

Dan Sugar, CEO and Founder, NextTracker: Yeah. So you asked about Charabase, which is a great company that has a sort of fuel factory assembly installation process. We’re supporting Terabase a 100% with everything we can do to help them. There’s also another dozen companies working on the field factory or installation or automation for installation, and we’re supporting pretty much all the above, folks that are coming and asking how how you know, for specific things to facilitate field factory installation to make labor more efficient, safer. We think all of that’s good.

We think it’s a hard problem. There’s multiple ways to approach it. And so we are supporting all the leaders that we’re engaged with in that particular activity, and we think that’s the right approach. And there’s a lot of we’ve seen progress and a lot of opportunity for future project pros progress. In our robotic programs that we’ve announced, these things attach basically separate buckets.

We’re going after things that validate that support the EPC to validate installation quality, identify deviations to support EPC on more efficient punch list items. We’re doing it to then create a digital three d map of the job site that supports adaptive tracking. We think what we’re doing is is unique in this area, and our true capture really delivers the results there and and expectations we’re creating. We’re have unique, unique robotic technology we’ve acquired with Amir Robotics on cleaning. Next tracker was a very early mover on robotic cleaning.

For the last seven years, we’ve been supporting our customers in The Middle East to empirically evaluate how robotic cleaning technology support. We’ve worked with a bunch of companies. We understand the tech. We’ve really leaned in. And so that really improves more yield gain.

And then with the On-site Technologies acquisition, it’s really supporting a higher durability and reliability of the solar power assets by inspecting things like the connectors and electrical valve system and then providing feedback on and and also reducing risk on where these are going. I’d like to pull back for a second and just talk about where these why we did these robotic cleaning or, excuse me, robotic category acquisition. It was really customer driven a lot as is a lot of our technology. We actually didn’t really believe in robotic cleaning. If you went back ten years ago, we didn’t feel it very cost effective.

But we saw our customers in areas that are very dry and that, have high dust storms really showed us the need. You can have a a major dust storm and, see, array performance degrade significantly in a short amount of time. We saw the need for robotic cleaning. And so, similarly and and we really then worked to find who are the best teams in these areas. And the Amir robotics team is incredible, has legacy in robotic cleaning, fantastic domain expertise, and we really focus on the key team.

Similarly, with on-site technologies, the team there really came from operations and maintenance of solar power. They have specific domain expertise, and we just love how the team was thinking about it. It wasn’t a robot in search of a solution. What they came up with was a need that was solved by a robotic technology that significantly lowered the cost, improved reliability, and reduced risk on the job site. So these are our values at NextTracker.

Customer demand drives then how we come up with solutions to lower the levelized cost of energy, improve durability of the system. With that question, that concludes our call today. Thank you all very much. As Howard mentioned, big picture. Very excited about our progress.

We’re off to an amazing start in Q1 and look forward to welcoming you all at our Capital Markets Day in November.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.

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