Sunrun Q4 2024 Earnings Report

Sunrun EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $1.41
• Consensus EPS: -$0.27
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$1.68
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Sunrun Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $518.49 million
• Expected Revenue: $541.05 million
• Beat/Miss: Missed by -$22.56 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Sunrun Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q4 2024
• Date: 2/27/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, February 27, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:30PM ET

Sunrun (NASDAQ:RUN), Inc. (NASDAQ: RUN) is a leading provider of residential solar energy systems in the United States. The company designs, installs and maintains rooftop solar panels and battery storage solutions for homeowners under flexible financing arrangements. Customers can choose from leasing, power purchase agreements or solar ownership models, all of which are supported by Sunrun’s network of installation partners and service technicians. Sunrun also offers integrated home energy management services, including its Brightbox battery storage product, which enables customers to store solar energy for use during peak hours or power outages.

Founded in 2007 by Lynn Jurich, Ed Fenster and Nat Kreamer, Sunrun is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company pioneered the solar-as-a-service business model, making rooftop solar more accessible to homeowners by eliminating up-front installation costs. Over time, Sunrun has grown its platform through organic expansion and strategic acquisitions, broadening its service offerings and operational footprint. Its business model centers on long-term customer contracts, ongoing maintenance and the sale of renewable energy credits generated by its installations.

Sunrun’s operations span more than 20 states and the District of Columbia, delivering solar and storage solutions to diverse climates and customer bases. The company continues to invest in technology and grid-integration capabilities, aiming to optimize energy usage for individual homeowners while supporting broader renewable energy adoption. With a focus on customer service and system reliability, Sunrun seeks to advance its mission of building a planet run by the sun.

Sunrun Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Sunrun delivered exceptional Q4 and full-year 2024 results, driving high-quality growth, meaningful cash generation, increased book value of deployed systems, and paying down $186 million of parent debt since Q1.
• The company has generated positive cash flow for three consecutive quarters and expects to remain cash-positive each quarter in 2025, allocating excess cash toward debt reduction and strategic AI investments.
• In Q4, storage attachment rates reached a record 62%, with 392 MWh of storage installed (+78% YoY), growing its network storage capacity to 2.5 GWh across over 156,000 systems.
• Sunrun’s virtual power plants and grid services are advancing value creation, with 16 active programs, 20,000 customer participants, and nearly 80 MW of instantaneous peak capacity supporting grid reliability.
• For 2025, Sunrun guides to $40–$50 million cash generation in Q1 and $200–$500 million for the full year, while shifting focus to aggregate subscriber value, contracted net value creation, and cash generation as its primary metrics.

Presentation

[Operator]

Good afternoon, and welcome to Sunrun's Fourth Quarter and Full Year twenty twenty four Earnings Conference Call. Please note that this call is being recorded and that one hour has been allocated for the call, including the Q and A session. To join the Q and A session after prepared remarks, please press star one at any time. We ask participants to limit themselves to one question and one follow-up question. I will now turn the call over to Patrick Dovin, Sunrun's Investor Relations Officer.

[Patrick Jobin, Senior VP of Finance & Investor Relations at Sunrun]

Thank you, operator. Before we begin, please note that certain remarks we will make on this call constitute forward looking statements. Though we believe these statements reflect our best judgment based on factors currently known to us, actual results may differ materially and adversely. Please refer to the company's filings with the SEC for a more inclusive discussion of risks and other factors that may cause our actual results to differ from projections made in any forward looking statements. Please note that these statements are being made as of today, and we disclaim any obligation to update or revise them.

[Patrick Jobin, Senior VP of Finance & Investor Relations at Sunrun]

On the call today are Mary Powell, Sunrun's CEO Danny Abadjan, Sunrun's CFO and Paul Dixon, Sunrun's President and Chief Revenue Officer. The presentation is available on Sunrun's Investor Relations website along with supplemental materials. An audio replay of today's call along with a copy of today's prepared remarks and transcript, including Q and A, will be posted to Sunrun's Investor Relations website shortly after the call. We've allocated sixty minutes from today's call, including the question and answer session. Now let me turn the call over to Mary.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

Thank you, Patrick, and thank all of you for joining us today. The fourth quarter was an exceptionally strong quarter for Sunrun and our execution positioned us well for 2025. We are delivering high quality growth, generating meaningful cash, increasing our book value of deployed systems and paying down our parent debt. We are poised to further improve our operating and financial results and deliver a very strong 2025 with meaningful cash generation. In 2024, we adapted to the rapid increase in interest rates, innovated through changes in state regulations, built a robust supply chain with strong domestic content focus and remained steadfast in the face of irrational behavior from several industry participants.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

We are improving in every dimension, focusing on fast effective execution, delivering strong financial and operating results, gaining share in a disciplined way and building a long term foundation of valuable grid resources. Executing on our plan does not require equity funding. In 2024, we optimized our product mix, prioritized the highest value geographies and routes to market with an intense focus on cost efficiency. At the same time, we increased storage attachment rates resulting in the highest net subscriber values Sunrun has ever reported. We have now posted positive cash generation for three consecutive quarters and expect to do so in every quarter throughout 2025, including the first quarter, which is seasonally the weakest.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

We have allocated excess cash to pay down our parent debt by $186,000,000 since Q1 of last year, while making strategic long term investments in AI to lower costs, streamline operations and create a differentiated customer experience. We also allocated excess cash to execute our end of year safe harbor equipment purchases to mitigate what we view as unlikely, but still potential policy changes. The fundamental long term demand drivers for our business are incredibly strong and unrelated to any political party affiliation. Americans want greater energy independence and control of their lives and their pocketbooks. The country also needs more power from all sources to fuel rapid growth in electrification and data centers and our growing fleet of energy resources will be part of that solution.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

For these reasons, it is no surprise that support for the energy we provide spans across all party lines. Turning to more specifics for the quarter. In Q4, we grew contracted total value generated or the aggregate net contracted value of systems installed in the quarter using capital costs observed in Q4 by 125% compared to the prior year and 48% compared to the prior quarter. We did this by growing our customer additions sequentially and by increasing subscriber values from higher battery attachment rates and ITC realization, while holding our creation costs flat. Cash generation was $34,000,000 in the quarter.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

We elected to invest $18,000,000 of working capital in safe harbor equipment, which obviously lowered our cash generation results in the quarter. In Q4, we also hit all time highs for storage attachment rates and capacity installed. We installed storage for 62% of our new customers, an increase of 17 percentage points from a year ago. We installed three ninety two megawatt hours of storage in Q4, up 78% from a year ago. Our fleet of network storage capacity has reached 2.5 gigawatt hours with over 156,000 storage systems installed.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

We continue to advance programs that generate value for customers, the grid and Sunrun. We have 16 grid service programs active across the country with over 20,000 customers participating. During 2024, Sunrun's virtual power plants successfully supported power grids across the country with a combined instantaneous peak of nearly 80 megawatts, a capacity greater than many traditional fossil fuel power plants. Sunrun is leading in establishing a platform to turn homes and vehicles into smart controllable load that can be dispatched into and improve the electric grid. I want to spend a minute on what we are seeing in recent industry data.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

We don't manage the market share. We view our leading position in the industry as a natural long term result of pursuing a customer first disciplined growth strategy. There have been periods where there are rational competitive behavior such as pricing and terms loan providers offered a few years ago and more recently pricing being offered by certain financing only new entrants. But our view is that a focus on the fundamentals and first rate execution always prevails in the long term. We lead with the best possible customer experience, underwrite healthy and financially sound business and grow in a sustainable strategic way.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

We have seen some new entrants become more rational in recent periods, while others continue to scale with uneconomic cash consuming activities. We have seen our share of residential storage installations expand to over 50% in The U. S, while residential solar installations nationwide picked up significantly in the last few quarters from 13% in Q1 to 19% in Q4. I'm pleased to see these trends, but I'm more pleased that we are doing it in a way that is consistently generating cash and delighting our customers. Sunrun is well positioned to drive meaningful value for shareholders in 2025 and beyond.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

The grid continues to become less reliable and more expensive. Consumers are demanding more energy independence and choice and technology advancements continue to unlock more opportunities. Our primary focus is furthering our differentiation, launching additional products and services to expand customer lifetime values and remaining the disciplined margin and customer focused industry leader, growing cash generation in the business for years to come. I know we are living in uncertain times and no one can predict the future perfectly, But what we can do is continue building an incredibly resilient and efficient organization that can pivot and respond to whatever is thrown at it. I recall just a few years ago, investors were skeptical because Sunrun had negative cash generation and was facing large regulatory changes in California, massive increases in interest rates and a challenging supply chain.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

Sunrun not only managed to adapt to these pressures, but has now started to generate significant cash on a recurring basis with higher rates, while operating under NEM3 and navigating the various supply chain dynamics. This is the team that knows how to focus on first rate execution and lead this industry. Before handing it over to Danny, I want to take a moment to share how Sunrun employees responded during the devastating Los Angeles wildfires in January. As soon as high winds and wildfire threats emerged, our team initiated our planned response to support customers and employees. In an emergency like this, the homes we serve become critical infrastructure in impacted communities, supporting both our customers and the communities they live in.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

Batteries were automatically adjusted to maximize backup power ahead of widespread blackouts. When I visited our Los Angeles teams and customers during that time, I heard numerous stories of how Sunrun customer homes provided essential power and a safe haven for so many who are impacted by this tragedy. These events highlight the urgent need to more safely generate and deliver energy to customers and to have on-site power generation and storage systems providing critical power during those emergencies. Demand for our storage offering remains robust following this event. With that, let me turn the call over to Danny for our financial update.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Thank you, Mary. Today, I will cover our operating and financial performance in the quarter along with an update on our capital markets activities and outlook. Turning first to results for the quarter on Slide 10. We have now installed over 156,000 solar and storage systems with storage attachment rates reaching 62% of installations during the quarter. We expect storage attachment rates to remain around this level or slightly higher for the next few quarters.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

This higher mix of storage continues to drive net subscriber values higher. During the quarter, we installed three ninety two megawatt hours of storage capacity, well above the high end of our guidance and an increase of 78% compared to the same quarter last year. Our total network storage capacity is now above 2.5 gigawatt hours. In the fourth quarter, solar energy capacity installed was approximately two forty two megawatts within our guidance range of two forty megawatts to two fifty megawatts and an increase of approximately 7% compared to the prior year. Customer additions were approximately 32,900, including approximately 30,700 subscriber additions.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Our subscription mix remained at 96% of deployments in the period. Customer additions with storage was approximately 20,400 in the quarter, an increase of 50% compared to the same quarter last year. We ended Q4 with approximately 1,000,000 customers and 889,000 subscribers representing 7.5 gigawatts of network solar energy capacity, a 13% increase year over year. Our subscribers generate significant recurring revenue with most under twenty or twenty five year contracts for the clean energy we provide. At the end of Q4, our annual recurring revenue or ARR stood at over $1,600,000,000 up 23% over the same period last year.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

We had an average contract life remaining of nearly eighteen years. Turning to Slide 10. In Q4, subscriber value was approximately $55,800 and creation cost was approximately $36,600 delivering a net subscriber value of $19,177 The strong result was from higher battery attachment rates, a higher average investment tax credit level and sequential growth in volumes leading to improved fixed cost absorption. Our Q4 subscriber value and net subscriber value reflect a blended investment tax credit of 39.8%. We realized stronger than expected achievement in the 2024 low to middle income ITC Adder allocation process, which provided an approximate $750 benefit to our reported subscriber value in Q4.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Qualification for the domestic content ITC adder is picking up, although at a slower ramp within our Affiliate Partner segment. Our blended investment tax credit was at approximately 42% for January installations, and we expect this level to increase further to 45% later in 2025. Total value generated, which is net subscriber value multiplied by the number of subscriber additions in the period was $589,000,000 in the fourth quarter. Our present value based metrics are presented using a 6% discount rate, but our financial underwriting already accounts for our current cost of capital, which was approximately 7.3% to Q4. At a 7.3% discount rate, net subscriber value was approximately $14,400 and total value generated was $441,000,000 Excluding the non contracted portion of subscriber value, but still adjusting for a 7.3% discount rate, contracted net subscriber value was approximately $11,600 and total value generated was $357,000,000 dollars an increase of 125% compared to the prior year.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

On Slide 11, you can see our progress increasing subscriber value through higher value mix and higher ITC levels, while keeping creation costs largely flat, generating expanded net subscriber values. Efficiency improvements and hardware cost declines coupled with operating cost leverage from sequential volume growth have largely offset the increased costs associated with higher storage attachment rates. Turning now to gross and net earning assets and our balance sheet on Slide 13. Gross earning assets were $17,800,000,000 at the end of the fourth quarter. Gross earning assets is the measure of cash flows we expect to receive from subscribers over time, net of operating and maintenance costs, distributions to tax equity partners and distributions to project equity financing partners, all discounted at a 6% unlevered capital cost.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Net earning assets were 6,800,000,000 at the end of the fourth quarter, up $536,000,000 from the prior quarter. Net earning assets is gross earning assets plus cash less all debt. Net earning assets does not include inventory, other construction in progress assets or any net derivative assets related to interest rate hedges, all of which represent additional value. The value creation upside we expect from future grid service opportunities as selling additional products and services to our customer base are now reflected in these metrics. In our prudent risk management approach, we programmatically enter into interest rate hedges to insulate our capital costs from adverse near term fluctuations.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

The vast majority of our debt is either fixed coupon long gated securities or floating rate loans that have been hedged with interest rate swaps. As such, we do not adjust the discount rate views in net earning assets to match current capital costs for new installations. Turning to our capital and markets activities. Sunrun's industry leading performance as an originator and servicer of residential solar assets continues to provide deep access to attractively priced capital. As of today, closed transactions and executed term sheets provide us with expected tax equity capacity to fund over 500 megawatts of projects for subscribers beyond what was deployed through the fourth quarter.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Thus far in 2025, we have added more than $1,300,000,000 in tax equity resulting in the strong runway. We also have over six eighty million dollars in unused commitments available in our non recourse senior revolving warehouse loan after our January securitization. This unused amount would fund approximately two thirty megawatts of projects for subscribers. Our strong debt capital runway allows us to be selective in timing term out transactions. In January, we priced the industry's second largest securitization behind only our own transaction from June of last year.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

The oversubscribed transaction was structured with three separate classes of A rated notes, only two of which were publicly offered. The weighted average spread of the notes was 197 basis points, which was an improvement of approximately 38 basis points from our prior securitization in September. Similar to prior transactions, we raised additional subordinated non recourse debt financing, which increased the cumulative inventory as measured against our contracted subscriber value metric to above 80%. When we think about our balance sheet, we prioritized a strong cash position and use of asset level non recourse debt financing. This strategy provides the lowest cost capital to finance cash flow producing assets backed by highly creditworthy consumers and is designed to avoid the use of parent capital to fund our recurring origination activity.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Cash generation was $34,000,000 in Q4, the third consecutive quarter of positive cash generation. Cash generation would have been approximately $66,000,000 had it not been for a few factors. First, we decided to invest $18,000,000 in cash for Safe Harbor equipment purchases in late Q4. Second, our affiliate partners experienced a slower ramp in domestic content ITG outer qualification. These two primary factors along with other minor working capital timing differences collectively represented over $32,000,000 in reductions to cash generation for the period.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

During the fourth quarter, we executed a safe harbor program to insulate various tax policy risks. The program was executed in a very capital efficient way, securing $350,000,000 in equipment purchases, while only consuming about $18,000,000 of debt working capital. These purchases provide risk mitigation for volumes throughout twenty twenty five for solar projects and midway through 2025 for storage projects. We will explore additional safe harbor initiatives if circumstances weren't in the future and we intend to maintain availability of non equity capital dedicated for this purpose. We have a strong balance sheet with no near term corporate debt maturities.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

We ended the quarter with $947,000,000 in total cash. During the fourth quarter, we repurchased $126,000,000 in principle of our 2026 convertible notes at a discount. As of the end of twenty twenty four, we had only $8,000,000 in principle outstanding of these notes, which we plan to repurchase in 2025. Since March 2024, we have paid down recourse debt by $186,000,000 by repurchasing our 2026 convertible notes and reducing borrowings under our recourse working capital facility. We expect to further pay down $100,000,000 or more in recourse debt in 2025.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Aside from the $8,000,000 outstanding of our 2026 convertible notes, we have no recourse debt maturities until March 2027. We have no current capital needs at this time. Over time, we will explore further capital allocation options to maximize shareholder value based on market conditions and long term outlook. Turning now to our financial outlook. The underpenetrated nature of our industry gives us confidence we can sustain robust growth throughout this decade.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

In this strong long term demand backdrop, our priority is to generate cash by continuing to increase customer values through growing our mix of higher value products and and by keeping our costs low. Our margin focused growth is yielding strong results and provides a high growth outlook for aggregate value creation, which will translate into cash generation and growth in our book value of deployed systems or net earning assets. Turning to Slides seventeen and eighteen. Before I share our specific guidance for Q1 and the full year 2025, I want to detail a few of the key metrics we will report and guide to commencing with our Q1 twenty twenty five release that we believe align with our strategy. Over a year ago, we started reporting subscriber value and net subscriber value pro form a for the market cost of capital we have served each period and used to make our financial underwriting decisions.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

This additional disclosure showed our ability to substantially grow unit margins even as capital costs remained elevated and fluctuated. Importantly, we also directly address critiques about our use of a fixed 6% discount rate in the higher capital cost environment. Going forward, we will report subscriber value, net subscriber value, total value generated and any similar metrics derived from subscriber value using only a floating discount rate that reflects market observed cost of capital for each period. Gross earning assets, our book value measure, will continue to use a fixed discount rate. As I noted, because the vast majority of our customer cash flows are not subject to floating rate exposure, adjusting the discount rate each quarter is not appropriate.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Continuing to increase our aggregate value creation correlates with growth in cash generation over time. Accordingly, we will start guiding to aggregate value creation metrics, while moving away from guiding to specific solar and storage deployment volumes and unit margins each period. We will continue to report and provide commentary on deployments of unit margins, including our optimization between the two, so that analysts and investors can continue to track the fundamental building blocks in our business. On our next call, we will provide guidance on the following primary metrics. First, aggregate subscriber value, which is subscriber value multiplied by the number of subscriber additions in a period.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Second, contracted net value creation, which is the contracted only portion of aggregate subscriber value, conservatively excluding non contracted value, less aggregate creation costs. And third, cash generation. On Slides nineteen and twenty, we detail our guidance. Strong value creation will allow us to deliver cash generation of $40,000,000 to $50,000,000 in Q1, which will be our fourth consecutive quarter of positive cash generation. Underpinning our Q1 cash generation guidance, storage installations are expected to grow at a robust pace, while solar installations are expected to be approximately flat compared to the prior year, with higher growth in our direct business than our affiliate partner business.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

In Q1, storage capacity installed is expected to be in a range of two sixty five megawatt hours to two seventy five megawatt hours and solar capacity installed is expected to be in a range of 170 megawatts to 180 megawatts. For the full year 2025, we expect cash generation to be in a range of $200,000,000 to $500,000,000 This is a revision from our prior guidance of $350,000,000 to $600,000,000 driven by a slower ramp in domestic content ITC adders in our affiliate partner business, higher capital cost assumptions and slightly lower volume expectations, partially offset by higher storage mix. On Slide 20, we outlined the assumptions and sensitivities related to key variables that would affect our achievement of our 2025 outlook. We expect a 44 weighted average ITC level in 2025 and further underpinning our guidance are assumptions of 7.5% to 8% average cost of project level capital, battery attachment rates around 66% and slight improvements in the timing of tax credit transfers as that market further matures. Our cash generation outlook does not reflect additional safe harbor equipment purchases.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

We expect solar install volumes to be approximately flat next year this year. As we achieve cash generation, we will continue to allocate excess unrestricted cash to deleverage with a target to pay down parent recourse debt by $100,000,000 or more by the end of twenty twenty five. We are committed to a capital allocation strategy beyond this initial deleveraging period that drives significant shareholder value. With that, let me turn it back to Mary.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

Thanks, Danny. I so appreciate the work of the entire Sunrun team. At our scale, even with more modest growth and new additions, we are adding over 100,000 customers a year, which is double digit growth to our fleet. And with 66% battery attachment rates, that's well over a gigawatt hour of valuable storage capacity or the peak capacity of a nuclear plant on an annual basis. The strategic shift we undertook nearly two years ago to emphasize high quality growth is yielding strong results in terms of repeatable and meaningful cash generation along with providing customers with a greater sense of independence, stability and security in their own homes. With that operator, let's open the line for questions.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. Our first question comes from the line of Praneeth Satish with Wells Fargo. Please proceed with your question.

[Praneeth Satish, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Thanks. Good evening. I guess I wanted to start first on the Safe Harbor. Maybe this is too simplistic of a way to look at this. But if I take the $350,000,000 of Safe Harbor that you did and divide by 5% to get to $7,000,000,000 So that kind of seems like you could cover a few years' worth of solar and storage installations. So I'm just trying to square that with the commentary you made on how the safe harbor will cover, I think, solar installed for one year and storage for half a year?

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Yes. Hey, it's Danny. I can help bridge that a little bit. So we said on the prepared remarks, it's about twelve months for solar deployments and approximately half the year for storage deployments. One element of Bridge is with the amount of equipment purchases and the kind of the ticket price, if you will.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

It's not a perfect optimization for every project to exactly 5%. So the actual amount of purchase could represent more than 25%. That simple division would cause you to overstate the amount of value. And then the amount of aggregate value against which it implies is the fair market value of projects. So you should be looking at aggregate system value created over an annual period or any period to bridge that kind of remainder of difference.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

But it is six months for batteries, about twelve months for storage only projects.

[Praneeth Satish, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Got it. That's helpful. And then secondly, on the guidance here, so you're guiding to $200,000,000 to $500,000,000 of cash generation in 'twenty five. You're committing to pay down $100,000,000 of recourse debt, basically, I guess, the working capital facility. So that leaves a good amount of unallocated cash generation.

[Praneeth Satish, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Maybe if you could just kind of walk us through your priorities for deploying that additional cash? And I guess why not pay down more debt?

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Yes. I think priority is to continue to deleverage. As far as deleveraging target, I I think we're looking at a target range of 1.5x to 3x free cash flow multiple, which for us we would use cash generation. And it's important to build multiple quarters of trailing look back of cash generation as we do that and with an outlook to continue. So we're obviously multiple quarters into that with the Q1 guide achievement that would make four consecutive quarters of positive cash generation.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

We would want to continue to use this period of time to delever the balance sheet to within those targets. That's about a one year outlook. Beyond that, there could be more deleveraging or during the period of time, there could be substantially more than $100,000,000 I think we view that as the floor. And the ultimate priority is to strengthen balance sheet over this period of time. And as we get closer and closer to our deleveraging targets, what comes into focus is capital allocation beyond that period, which would be in the interest of maximizing shareholder value.

[Praneeth Satish, Analyst at Wells Fargo]

Got it. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Philip Shen with Roth Capital Partners LLC. Please proceed with your question.

[Philip Shen, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Roth Capital Partners, LLC]

Congrats on your solid execution, cash generation, debt pay down and stable performance overall during this challenging time. This stands in contrast with some peers in the industry who are struggling. Wanted to see if you could comment on the tax equity and upfront funding dynamics. It seems like things may be slowing down on the front end, especially following the election. Can you give some color on this?

[Philip Shen, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Roth Capital Partners, LLC]

And importantly, how are you guys managing through perhaps a lengthening of the tax equity payment terms? Thanks.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Yes. So on the prepared remarks, we talked about $1,300,000,000 in tax equity added to our runway this year. If we include debt, I know your question is not specific to debt, but we've had a very busy start to the year in terms of raising capital and front ending our capital raises and being on a pretty high velocity deal base. And so that's $2,000,000,000 or more in aggregate of capital if you have the two together. But on the tax equity piece specifically, we're continuing to see both the emergence of certain traditional tax equity buyers who might have been for reasons unspecific to the space and the market for a little bit of time.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

We've seen traditional tax equity continue to participate in greater and greater ways in the hybrid transaction format. And we've definitely seen most significantly a big broadening out of the transfer credit buyer universe, very large corporates increasing in the mix and we're certainly seeing our investor universe broaden out and the deal activity be quite active at the front end of the year.

[Philip Shen, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Roth Capital Partners, LLC]

Right. And so as that broadening of that buyer universe happens and with the uncertainty with the IRA, have you seen payment terms change as a result? Perhaps the traditional tax equity investors who are syndicating, for lack of a better word, the deals now instead of participant being the entire source of the tax equity, they might be bringing in other tax credit investors, but those guys might be getting a little bit skittish with the IRA. How are you guys managing through that where some of the traditional tax equity might be very comfortable with the situation, but some of the new players who may not have deep expertise in this space be dealing with that? And then shifting to my other topic on domestic content and last quarter you guys talked about Powerwall three not having shortages for you guys.

[Philip Shen, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Roth Capital Partners, LLC]

And so they recently shared some new allocations for Q2 in terms of how much people are getting in terms of PowerL3. Are you getting the full allocation that you've been expecting? Thanks.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Sure. Phil, I'll take the tie off on that first question and then I'll pass it over. But on the tax equity dynamics, I would say if you track our commentary of the past, which is as we moved into the tax credit transfer market, there have been impacts to the price of credits that we sell. I would say not much due to report there. Low to mid 90s on a cents per credit basis continues to be the price.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

I would say those have been actually formed by the system and we're expecting to continue with potential for upside. As far as policy, tax policy uncertainty risk and how it's being digested by the market, I think people are generally comfortable at this point on people talking about in calendar year 2025 tax credit sales, people are generally comfortable with the current law that's in place and underwriting those credits. So we're not really seeing an impact that's noticeable there.

[Paul Dickson, President & Chief Revenue Officer at Sunrun]

And then this Paul, just to answer the question on Powerwall Supply, generally in great shape there. As you're seeing, we're steadily raising our guidance and Heslod in particular remains a strong partner for us at generally keeping up with demand. We do have other partners in our fleet portfolio that we use that have great partnership and really align supply chain and have very little issues whatsoever.

[Philip Shen, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Roth Capital Partners, LLC]

Great. Thanks guys. Keep up the good work and I'll pass it on.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Mahesh Madloy with Mizuho Securities. Please proceed with your question.

[Maheep Mandloi, Director, Senior Clean Energy Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Hey, good evening. Thanks for taking the questions. Nice to see this cash generation hitting at that $200,000,000 including that $18,000,000 if I do that. But maybe one question just on the guidance for $25,000,000 you talked about solar being slightly flattish. Is that due to your affiliate partners or just broader market slowdown you're seeing there or just more competition with other leading companies?

[Maheep Mandloi, Director, Senior Clean Energy Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

If you could just highlight any color on that, great.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

Yes. So for sure, this is Mary. Thanks for the question. Our volume outcome is a bottoms up go to market approach. Our direct business is seeing solid growth.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

We are seeing some less growth in affiliate partners. As you know, we shifted to a storage first strategy, margin focused strategy that's generating cash. So again, we feel we're growing market share and the data clearly indicates this. So that's our view.

[Maheep Mandloi, Director, Senior Clean Energy Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Got it. And maybe just on top of that, so you talked about one of the reasons for reduced cash generation for '25 was slower ramp in domestic content. That is for affiliate partners. Could you elaborate on that? Is that them your partners getting less domestic equipment or like batteries or solar or anything specific there?

[Paul Dickson, President & Chief Revenue Officer at Sunrun]

Yes, I think you did exactly that. So, I think there's some challenges with obtaining qualifying domestic content hardware. And then, as the rules evolve and clarity comes on them, operationalizing processes to be able to qualify can be challenging for some smaller partners since we've seen slower adoption with our affiliate business.

[Maheep Mandloi, Director, Senior Clean Energy Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Securities]

Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.

[Colin Rusch, Managing Director - Head of Sustainable Growth & Resource Optimization Research at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Thanks so much. Can you just talk a little bit about the labor pool that you're seeing right now and shifts in terms of any impact of immigration law or other folks exiting the business and being able to up some new folks?

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

Thanks for the question. This is Mary. We're not seeing any labor impact changes. We have Sunrun repeatedly comes out as one of the best companies to work for. We have a really good pipeline, to companies to work for.

[Mary Powell, CEO at Sunrun]

We have a really good pipeline to support our needs across the business. So we're feeling really good in that arena.

[Paul Dickson, President & Chief Revenue Officer at Sunrun]

I think on the second part of the question, just as others slow down in the space of picking up talent, I would say, yes, I mean, people do see Sunrun as kind of a safe haven, a place to go build a long stable career. And on the sales front and on the installation front, we see people who have been out of the industry kind of migrating to Sunrun.

[Colin Rusch, Managing Director - Head of Sustainable Growth & Resource Optimization Research at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.]

Great.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Dylan Lusano with Wolfe Research. Please proceed with your question.

[Dylan Nassano, Vice President at Wolfe Research, LLC]

Hey, good afternoon, everyone.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Hey, Dylan.

[Dylan Nassano, Vice President at Wolfe Research, LLC]

Just want to start with, it looks like sales and marketing has been kind of one of the more meaningful tailwinds for creation costs, which were flat in the quarter. Can you just talk a little bit about what you're seeing with commissions? And is that the competitive dynamics that you've talked about, is that kind of how has that been factoring into how you're kind of paying commissions?

[Paul Dickson, President & Chief Revenue Officer at Sunrun]

Yes. I think one of the areas of focus for us has been standardization and speed installation in our operations business. Our operations team, I think, is, I I can confidently say the best in the industry and the fastest and most efficient they've ever been. And so as salespeople evaluate where do they want to sell, the experience that their customers get is first class at Subram. So that's really helped us to be able to have commission leverage, if you will, by providing a superior operations experience for our salespeople.

[Paul Dickson, President & Chief Revenue Officer at Sunrun]

The second would be the product that we sell and being a storage first business. So when you're out there trying to compete on price or deliver customer savings against the utility rate versus talking about the benefits of resiliency and battery backup and future revenue sources for the customer through virtual power plants, it's a completely different offering and more sophisticated thoughtful salespeople are recognizing that and are seeing they're able to generate assets that have higher value that earn them a more attractive commission, But on a relative basis, we create good economies of scale for us on a per unit basis.

[Dylan Nassano, Vice President at Wolfe Research, LLC]

Got it. Thank you.

[Dylan Nassano, Vice President at Wolfe Research, LLC]

And then I guess just a more timely question. The Trump administration seems like it's trying to keep everybody on their toes with the tariffs. I guess specifically for Sunrun, I'm assuming that would kind of flow through the Snap and Rack business in terms of exposure to tariffs, whether that be China, Canada or Mexico. Can you just speak to any exposure that you might have?

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Yes, I'll talk through it at a high level as we think about it from the holistic financial picture. So first, as a reminder, there have been various forms of tariffs burdening the industry since 2012. Today, as we look at the total cost stack, hardware is about a third of our total costs. And we estimate that when you kind of put, it's about a $0.2 per watt aggregate cost, between all of the elements, not just racking equipment, that would be about a 13 ish percent increase to overall hardware costs. But then when you cut that down for what it means to our overall capital creation cost stack, if you will, that's about a 4% increase in overall costs.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

So I would say a large portion of which we've already also baked into our expectations. And so if we look at it and we take that in combination with the fact that pricing related to our safe harbor purchases are even locked in, there's a good mitigation for cost impacts this year. And ultimately, 2026, that's a few percentage points of potential impact and we'll continue to grind costs down around it to be best positioned to kind of continue to grow cash generation beyond '25.

[Dylan Nassano, Vice President at Wolfe Research, LLC]

Great. Thank you. I'll pass it on.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Brian Lee with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.

[Tyler Bisset, Equity Research Associate at Goldman Sachs]

Hey, guys. This is Tyler Bissett on for Brian. Thanks for taking our questions. Just wanted to first touch on your updated key assumptions for the different cash generation metrics. Can you just discuss like what drivers led you to revise those?

[Tyler Bisset, Equity Research Associate at Goldman Sachs]

It's just higher costs are seen or is it something else?

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Yes. I think you just need in the course of the planning exercise, we talked about the ITC realization that's 44%. So that's mainly a reflection of not ultimately where we'll end up, plus the delayed near term ramp we discussed and covered that is mainly related to the affiliate partner. We said also expecting to reach 45% for the year, but maybe attaining 44% for the whole calendar year. So long term, not a change, but near term impacts the calendar year.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

On cost of capital, I would say today, obviously, we gave the 7.3% discount rate looking back on Q4 actuals and we planned a little bit more conservatively, which obviously there's been multiple quarters now with rates fluctuating. So we've planned a little bit higher than where we're currently running for sake of conservatism and then battery attachment rates that's just updating to the normal run rate. Of course, we also gave commentary both on the call and during the Q and A here on volume and how that's moved around from the past quarter's outlook.

[Tyler Bisset, Equity Research Associate at Goldman Sachs]

Great. Super helpful. And then just on Safe Harboring, you mentioned you spent $18,000,000 in cash in 4Q to secure the $350,000,000 Should we expect any continued cash deployment for that like incrementally here in like the first half or anything?

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

It will not in a one time fashion. I would say it will probably look more like a run rate activity through the year. The one thing we've also mentioned is we don't assume, yes, right. So there's also just to step back, there's also consumption of equipment through the year occurring with which is cash timing of monetization and install occurring concurrently with equipment payments for committed purchases. So the one time activity we call out for Q4 will run right now for the year.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

And then as far as any future safe harbor activity, we haven't planned for that in the numbers. That could be incremental activity as we plan out the year. So there could be future forthcoming impacts if we took on four safe harbor purchases to extend that out.

[Tyler Bisset, Equity Research Associate at Goldman Sachs]

Great. Thank you very much.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tim Moore with ClearStreet. Please proceed with your question.

[Tim Moore, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Clear Street]

Thanks so much. Investors are clearly starting to appreciate your cash generation and focusing that as the main metric. And we like that you're doing profitability and cash generation rather than solely focusing on the top line. So I guess I'm just wondering with your guidance commentary on flat solar energy capacity installation versus the robust growth on the battery energy storage and just kind of factoring in new home sales should be a driver this year, you've been doing good on that since last summers. Got California rebound, retrofits, battery attachment rate might go up 198% in the first half of the year as you left the 52% first half last year.

[Tim Moore, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Clear Street]

So can you just any color maybe on what you think revenue growth could be even though it's not the main metric? I mean, is it too assertive to think upper single digits growth for the year?

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

So from a top line revenue growth perspective, the revenue should be growing faster than the units because we're creating higher value units. I think you already hit all the factors, The storage attachment rate continue to focus and grow in the highest value markets and deprioritization, if you will, of solar only. And as we do that, the other thing we noticed is the ability to hold the cost discipline and the creation cost flag inclusive of sales and marketing enables us to expand margin, reduce costs as a percent of revenue and that's correlating with cash generation. So the other part of this is, I did shed a little bit of light for few minutes on the new metrics. We're excited about that.

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

And I think they'll be able to better illustrate all those dimensions over time to see better how the top line growth is not just units, but it's higher value units and margin expansion.

[Tim Moore, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Clear Street]

That's helpful. And the only other question I had was just on irrational competitive behavior. I know Mary mentioned that some new entrants aren't irrational, but there's probably some incumbents that still haven't changed their ways. I mean, can you just give us a flavor or at least benchmark, if irrational behavior peaked sometime last summer, I don't know if it did, but if it was something like five out of 10 last summer, how have you seen it in the last few months? Has it improved overall a little bit?

[Paul Dickson, President & Chief Revenue Officer at Sunrun]

Yes, great question. I would say it's about stable. When prices are actually, they have a tendency to not be able to do it forever. And so as one kind of unwinds, a new one has kind of replaced them and then quickly gets filled up with volume with sales reps that are happy to take advantage of someone paying more for assets than the proceeds you can generate on them. And so I would say it's largely stable in terms of a percent of the market that is overpaying for assets, but there's kind of been some exchange of who those people are.

[Tim Moore, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Clear Street]

Great. That's very helpful that it hasn't worsened. I appreciate that.

[Paul Dickson, President & Chief Revenue Officer at Sunrun]

Thank you.

[Tim Moore, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Clear Street]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Vikram Badri with Citibank. Please proceed with your question.

[Vikram Bagri, Member Board of Directors at Citi]

Hi, thanks for taking the question. Just going back to the safe harboring of the equipment, are you able to quantify whether you'll face any higher inventory costs on those modules and storage that you're safe harboring this year? Is there any incremental warehousing costs that you might face on that?

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Yes, we've been able so you could look at the Q4 inventory balance that did take up in the range of $60,000,000 So there is a little bit higher carrying, but as you'll also see that number is not $350,000,000 dollars So it's not necessarily showing up as a big front ended impact on inventory warehouse costs. But we also didn't know we did it in a very capital efficient manner on use of corporate cash, which implies we use third party capital to fund it, which has some interest costs. So I'd say that the bigger share costs, Brian, more on the financing charges as opposed to the holding costs, which I think we're going to be very quite efficient on.

[Vikram Bagri, Member Board of Directors at Citi]

Got it. And just one follow-up, maybe I might have missed it earlier, but what was the rush thinking behind having a bit of a longer lead time on the modules as opposed to storage?

[Paul Dickson, President & Chief Revenue Officer at Sunrun]

Could you repeat that question?

[Vikram Bagri, Member Board of Directors at Citi]

What was the thinking behind having a bit of a longer runway for safe harboring on the module side as opposed to on the storage side?

[Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer at Sunrun]

Yes, I think it's just a relative availability of equipment in the market. One year of modules being available, one year of batteries not being available.

[Vikram Bagri, Member Board of Directors at Citi]

Okay. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. And that concludes the time that has been allocated for Q and A. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Patrick Jobin, Senior VP of Finance & Investor Relations
• Mary Powell, CEO
• Danny Abajian, Chief Financial Officer
• Paul Dickson, President & Chief Revenue Officer

Analysts

• Praneeth Satish, Analyst at Wells Fargo
• Philip Shen, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Roth Capital Partners, LLC
• Maheep Mandloi, Director, Senior Clean Energy Equity Research Analyst at Mizuho Securities
• Colin Rusch, Managing Director - Head of Sustainable Growth & Resource Optimization Research at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.
• Dylan Nassano, Vice President at Wolfe Research, LLC
• Tyler Bisset, Equity Research Associate at Goldman Sachs
• Tim Moore, Managing Director, Senior Research Analyst at Clear Street
• Vikram Bagri, Member Board of Directors at Citi