Is This Really SolarCity’s Best Quarter?

The company gave guidance for the first quarter with a target of 145 megawatts (MW) installed, the first step in planned year-over-year growth of more than 100% in residential MW, and total MW installed increasing 77% year-over-year. Operating Lease and Solar Energy Systems revenue is expected to be in the range of $47 million to $52 million, and Solar Energy System and Component Sale Revenue is expected to total between $6 million and $8 million. SolarCity expects losses per share in the first quarter in the range of $1.75 to $1.65. The consensus estimates are for a per-share loss of $1.25 and $71.82 million in revenue for the first quarter as well.

At the end of 2014, SolarCity had 190,000 customers, $2.8 billion of solar energy assets capitalized on its balance sheet and estimated nominal contracted payments remaining of $5.0 billion.

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For the fourth quarter, SolarCity booked 206 MW, an increase of 103% from the same period in the previous year. A total of 176 MW was deployed at this time, up 70%, with Residential accounting for 147 MW of this deployment. The company added a total of 21,318 new customers in the fourth quarter.

According an open letter on SolarCity’s website:

We concluded the best quarter and year in our history. We created more long-term value for shareholders in 2014 than we had in all prior years combined and we are on pace to set new records this year. Further, we extended our lead as the No. 1 solar service provider in the nation in terms of customers, and we continue to ramp our sales operational, and finance capacity towards our goal to outpace the industry once again and deploy as much as 1 GW of solar installations in 2015 and ultimately reach one million customers by mid-2018.

The company had a couple of analysts make calls on it in January. Raymond James reiterated a Positive rating for SolarCity, though no price target was listed with this call. Its previously listed price target was $75.00. Canaccord Genuity had a Buy rating and lowered its price target to $64.00 from $87.00.

Shares of SolarCity closed Wednesday down 1.8% at $57.10. Following the release of the earnings report, shares were down 4.7% at $54.42 in after-hours trading. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $84.89 and a 52-week trading range of $45.79 to $88.35.

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