Housing

SolarCity Brings Cheap Financing to Drive More Residential Solar

SolarCity Corp. (NASDAQ: SCTY) has decided that perhaps offering new solar financing will be a way to generate more interest in getting solar panels on top of houses. The company has introduced a program called MyPower, represented as the first-of-its kind solar financing option combining a low upfront cost and immediate utility savings of a power purchase agreement with the benefits of ownership.

The MyPower plan is financed through the company’s own SolarCity Finance Company, with a fixed annual percentage rate as low as 4.5% for 30 years. MyPower customers will enjoy a 30-year warranty, production guarantee and monitoring service package.

24/7 Wall St. commends this offering to drive down the cost of solar, but there is a key question that SolarCity investors need to ask. With SolarCity expected to have big losses from operations in 2014 and 2015, with revenues growing massively, when is it that the company will actually turn a profit from operations?

The way this program works for SolarCity customers is that they pay for their MyPower solar loan similar to the way they pay for a solar power purchase agreement — based on the energy the system produces from the sun, but they retain ownership of the solar panels.

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SolarCity went on to say that MyPower’s unique structure creates America’s most affordable solar loan with a lower cost than power purchase agreements in many locations, represented as up to 40% less for solar power than utility power. It is also represented that MyPower allows customers to prepay their entire balance or prepay a portion of their solar loan to lower their monthly payments at any time with no fees or penalties.

SolarCity is already the largest residential solar service provider, and the company says that it installed more residential solar in the second quarter of 2014 alone than its next 50 competitors combined. Now it wants more. The company’s press release says directly that it expects MyPower to expand the addressable market for solar power to areas of the United States that have traditionally seen very little adoption.

SolarCity will immediately offer MyPower to customers in Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York and New Jersey. The company ultimately plans to expand the product beyond its existing service territory. The press release said:

While most solar loans are provided by third-party banks and municipalities in partnership with solar manufacturers and regional installers, SolarCity has created the industry’s best financing terms by lending directly to customers as part of its full-service model. Some competitor products place a lien on the customer’s home and involve an onerous approval process. MyPower places no lien on the home — making it easier to transfer in a sale — and it only has a minimum credit score requirement of 680.

SolarCity shares were up more than 2% at $55.75 shortly after the opening bell on Wednesday. Its 52-week trading range is $36.32 to $88.35, and its market cap is nearly $5.2 billion. Analysts are calling for revenue of $249.6 million in 2014 and $456.67 million in 2015. We have yet to see how much analysts will ratchet up their expectations for revenues in 2015, but we would point out that the Thomson Reuters consensus estimates currently project a loss of $4.12 per share in 2014 and a loss of $4.74 per share in 2015.

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