Residential Solar Firm Sunrun’s Q3 Revenue Jumps 44% YoY on Higher Customer Acquisition

The company installed 17% more solar capacity at 255.8 MW in Q3

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U.S.-based company Sunrun posted total revenue of $631.9 million in the third quarter (Q3) of 2022, up 44% year-over-year (YoY), on the back of growth in customer additions and improved net subscriber value during the quarter.

Sunrun, which provides services for residential solar energy and battery storage, said it added 35,760 customers in the July-September period, an increase of 21% YoY. Sunrun’s net subscriber value rose 68% to $13,259 in Q3. Net subscriber value is a measure of current and future cash flows per subscriber.

The company said it installed 17% more solar capacity at 255.8 MW in Q3. The capacity installed for subscribers was 181.6 MW in the same period.

For Q4, 2022, the clean energy services company expects solar energy capacity installed to be

approximately 25% for the full year. “We expect Net Subscriber Value to increase sequentially in Q4 and total value generated to be greater than $1 billion for the full year 2022, an increase from our prior guidance of greater than $900 million,” Danny Abajian, Sunrun’s CFO said.

The company generated $338 million in net subscriber value which it said is fuelled by the number of new subscriber additions in Q3.

Sunrun said that its subscriber value for the period reflects the benefit of a 30% tax credit as opposed to 26% earlier, extended by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which was passed in August this year.

Even without the tax gain, the company said its net subscriber value exceeded Sunrun’s prior guidance of over $10,000.

The company’s net income rose to $210.5 million during the quarter from $24.13 million in Q3 2021, due to an increase in other income of $102.3 million relating primarily to gains on derivatives recognized during the quarter.

Sunrun’s CEO Mary Powell said, “We have maintained strong overhead cost discipline, with G&A expenses declining more than 6% compared to last year and reaching an all-time low of approximately $1,100 per new customer, a 20% improvement year over year, showing the benefits of our scale and disciplined approach to sustainable growth.”

In Q3, Sunrun announced electrifying homes by providing them energy independence by collaborating with Lunar Energy which specializes in a next-generation integrated home battery, inverter, and software offerings with advanced grid services capabilities.

Sunrun has invested $150 million and owns approximately 37% of Lunar Energy. Lunar’s first product will be an integrated, next-generation, purpose-built combined battery, inverter, and VPP software offering, to be launched soon.

Sunrun said that in Q3, its partnership with Ford continued to deliver strong results, and the collaboration now has over 1,000 Ford Charge Station Pro orders.

During the quarter, the board of Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority approved Sunrun’s 17 MW virtual power plant (VPP) contract which is deemed to be the first distributed large-scale storage program to date, on the island.

The VPP will help the hurricane-hit regions harden Puerto Rico’s fragile grid while lowering energy costs for all grid-connected consumers and reducing pollution in the region. The company said that it will begin enrolling and networking a minimum of 7,000 solar-plus-battery systems by 2023, to start early dispatches in 2024.

Also, during California’s unprecedented wave of Flex Alerts during the first week of September, over 17,000 Sunrun’s customers delivered 1.1 GWh of energy back to California’s grid during the critical hours of 4-9 pm, avoiding blackouts.

In September, the company’s East Bay Community Energy (EBCE) VPP delivered over 55 MWh to California’s strained grid from around 1,000 solar-plus-battery customers.

In the U.S., Sunrun now has over 47,000 solar and battery systems powering several households with reliable energy during multi-day outages.

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