SunPower’s Q3: EPS Crushed, $551M Q3 Revenue at 20.4% GM

A profitable quarter for the solar cell efficiency leader.  On track for 2010 guidance.

SunPower (Nasdaq:SPWRA) entered the earnings confessional after the market closed today with Wall Street looking for a profit of 13 cents per share.  The solar cell efficiency leader crushed that number with Q3 GAAP EPS of 21 cents per share, Q3 non-GAAP EPS of 26 cents per share.  In the same quarter last year, SunPower posted earnings of 28 cents per share.

This strong news comes despite the words of Schaeffer's Investment Research: "Looking back, the company's fundamental performance has been abysmal, missing the consensus estimate twice in the prior four reporting periods, with an average downside surprise of 132 percent." Ouch.  Not so this quarter.

Here are some results:

Major recent milestones include:

SunPower continues to trumpet the advantages of high-efficiency and its benefits for levelized cost of energy (LCOE) and land usage.

A few weeks ago, we reported on a significant event in the life of SunPower:

Moodys issued a press release stating that Andromeda PV, a subsidiary of SunPower, received a $279 million loan from two French banks to build two solar PV plants at Montalto di Castro, Italy, with a combined capacity of 51 megawatts (a 45.3-megawatt project and a 6.1-megawatt project).  SunPower expects construction and financing to be completed by the end of this year.  The note has two equal tranches with two favorable investment grade ratings.  According to Vishal Shah of Barclays Capital, SunPower still needs to close debt financing and sell the equity piece in order to recognize revenues.  Additionally, this is the first investment-grade solar debt deal of meaningful size, and it signals that SunPower could continue to secure large-project financing in 2011.

Owning the project and downstream integration are keeping SunPower in the game despite high product costs. 

As of the publication of this article, SunPower's stock price was steady at $14.09.