SolarCity Q2 Adj. Loss Narrower Than View, But Revenues Miss

(RTTNews) - Clean energy distributor SolarCity Corp. (SCTY) on Thursday reported a loss for the second quarter that was wider than last year despite strong revenue growth and customer additions.

However, adjusted loss for the quarter came in narrower than analysts' expectations, while revenues missed their estimates. Looking ahead, the company forecast adjusted loss for the third quarter to be wider than Street estimates.

The San Mateo, California-based company's net loss attributable to common stockholders for the second quarter was $47.65 million from $39.46 million in the year-ago period. However, loss per share was flat with last year at $0.52, reflecting lower share count.

Adjusted loss before non-controlling interests and redeemable non-controlling interests for the latest quarter was $0.96 per share. On average, nine analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report a loss of $0.99 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Revenues for the quarter grew 62 percent to $61.33 million from $37.95 million in the same quarter last year, but missed analysts' consensus estimate of $63.24 million.

Operating leases and solar energy systems incentives revenue more than doubled from last year to $43.18 million, while solar energy system sales increased 5 percent to $18.15 million.

Residential MWs deployed soared 111 percent from last year to 90 MW, to drive total MW deployments to 107 MW, an increase of 102 percent year-over-year.

New customers increased to 30,372 from 9,563 a year ago, leading to cumulative customer growth of 102 percent to 141,034. The company ended the second quarter with cumulative MW deployed of 756 MW and $3.3 billion of estimated nominal contracted payments remaining.

Gross profit for the quarter almost tripled from the year-ago period to $22.87 million. Total operating expenses more than doubled to $97.2 million, with Non-cash amortization of intangibles and stock compensation expense accounted for $18.3 million of reported operating expenses.

Looking ahead to the third quarter, SolarCity forecast adjusted loss in a range of $1.10 to $1.20 per share, on projected operating lease and solar energy systems incentive revenues between $50 million and $55 million as well as solar energy systems sales revenue of $4 million to $8 million.

Analysts currently expect the company to report loss of $1.00 per share for the quarter on revenues of $81.87 million.

The company continues to expect MW deployed of 500 MW to 550 MW in 2014, and 900 MW to 1,000 MW in 2015.

The company also continues to expect to exit next year with more than 2 GW of cumulative deployments and annualized electricity production of about 2.8 terawatt-hours and be on a path to fulfil its goal of becoming one of the largest suppliers of electricity in the U.S.

SCTY closed Thursday's regular trading session at $75.63, up $2.77 or 3.80 percent on a volume of 8.06 million shares. In after-hours, the stock further gained $2.33 or 3.08 percent to $77.96.