Highlights in the first quarter of 2009 included the signing of a framework agreement with Ecostream to provide renewable energy conversion solutions, including the company’s PowerGate Plus line of solar PV inverters. Satcon Technology also expanded the company’s commercial capabilities in Asia through a distributor partnership agreement with Parity Solar Ltd. The company also signed a preferred reseller agreement with Survey Digital, for solar PV systems in Greece.
In the first quarter of 2009, Satcon Technology launched two new renewable energy solutions. Satcon Solstice is the solar industry’s first complete utility grade distributed energy management solution for large-scale solar plants. Solstice delivers fine-grained power harvesting and control with advanced utility ready grid interconnection capabilities, while boosting total system power production and overall performance.
Satcon Spectrum is the complete solar micro-grid solution built on a platform of the company’s proven industrial solar inverter solutions. It uses integrated energy storage in order to manage intermittency and provide the advanced control capabilities that utilities require to incorporate solar energy as a stable and controllable contributor to their power generation portfolio.
Financial Results:
The company reported total revenue for the first quarter of 2009 of $14.9 million, an increase from $11.4 million in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin for the quarter was 10%, compared with 6% in the year-ago quarter.
Loss from operations for the first quarter was around $5.2 million, compared with a loss of $2.8 million in the year-ago quarter.
Net loss attributable to common shareholders was $11.9 million, or ($0.23) per share, compared with net loss attributable to common shareholders of $4.3 million, or ($0.09) per share in the year-ago quarter. The loss includes $1.1 million of non-cash charges for dividends and accretion related to the company’s Series C preferred stock. This loss also includes $5.4 million of non-cash charges related to Satcon Technology’s warrant liability of which $4.7 million are a direct result of the company’s mandatory adoption of EITF 07-05 Determining Whether an Instrument (or Embedded Feature) Is Indexed to an Entity’s Own Stock, which requires the company to record previously issued warrants as a liability rather than an equity as reported in prior financial statements. These charges to operations do not reflect new financing activity, but are due to the company’s required adoption of new accounting pronouncements from the FASB, which mandate the company account for its previously issued warrants in this manner.
Cash and cash equivalents at April 4, 2009 were $6.8 million, compared with $10.0 million at December 31, 2008.
The company reported an ending backlog on April 4, 2009 of around $12.2 million, compared with backlog of $23 million on December 31, 2008. The decrease in backlog for the first quarter was due to the impact of the challenging macroeconomic environment.
We are pleased that while market conditions stressed the overall solar industry, we were still able to increase our revenue over the same quarter last year, said Steve Rhoades, president and chief executive officer at SatCon Technology. In conjunction with improving our operational efficiency and expanding our commercial capabilities, we also invested heavily in R&D, as indicated by the recent general availability release of the PowerGate Plus 1 megawatt inverter and the launch of our next generation power conversion platform, Solstice.
We believe that our firm commitment to technology innovation and product development will enable us to extend our leadership position in the worldwide large scale and utility grade PV market, said Rhoades. Looking ahead, we anticipate the weak economic environment to continue to impact our financial performance in the second quarter. However, we have a strong pipeline of large scale projects worldwide and anticipate improved sales of our renewable energy solutions in the second half of 2009 which enables us to continue to guide toward operating profitability in the second half of the year.
