SolarEdge founder and CEO Guy Sella has taken a leave of absence for health reasons, leaving the Israel-based solar microelectronics maker under the interim leadership of long-time executive and current Vice President of Global Sales Zvi Lando.
Wednesday’s announcement stated that Sella has experienced a significant decline in health in the past few days due to a previously disclosed health condition. In 2017, Sella disclosed in a regulatory filing that he had been diagnosed with colon cancer.
Sella founded SolarEdge in 2006 and took it public in 2015. Since then, the Israel-based company has grown into a market leader for its panel-level power optimization and inverter monitoring products. It has also expanded into energy storage, EV charging and whole-home energy monitoring and controls.
So far this year, SolarEdge has followed up a record-breaking $271.9 million in revenue in the first quarter with another record-breaking $325 million in revenue for the second quarter. In its second-quarter earnings conference call earlier this month, SolarEdge projected a continued growth streak in the third quarter, with revenue between $395 million and $410 million.
Residential and commercial-scale solar inverters and DC optimizers drive almost all of SolarEdge's business. But in the last year, the company has acquired uninterrupted power specialist Gamatronic, South Korean battery manufacturer Kokam and Italian electric mobility firm SMRE. This has expanded its portfolio of services significantly, although revenue for these non-solar business lines remains relatively low at $18.1 million for the second quarter.
SolarEdge’s primary competitor in U.S. markets, microinverter maker Enphase, has grown more formidable after recovering from the brink of financial collapse. It delivered profits in the last three quarters while scaling its new IQ 7 product.
Even so, SolarEdge’s business is roughly three times larger than that of Enphase, and it maintains a dominant position in European markets. Europe accounted for 48 percent of SolarEdge’s solar revenue in the second quarter, while the U.S. accounted for 41 percent, Sella said in this month’s conference call.
SolarEdge also gained significant market share in Brazil, and has been developing a factory in Vietnam as a workaround for the tariffs that the U.S. imposed on goods manufactured in China.