SolarCity Earnings: Here’s Why Investors are Not Happy Now

SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY) had a loss and missed Wall Street’s expectations, AND came up short on beating the revenue expectation. The revenue miss is a negative sign to shareholders seeking high growth out of the company. Shares are down 10.74%.

SolarCity Corp Earnings Cheat Sheet

Results:

Revenue: Decreased 0% to $25.3 million from the year-earlier quarter.

Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: reported adjusted EPS loss of $1.1 per share. By that measure, the company missed the mean analyst estimate of $-0.44. It missed the average revenue estimate of $36.67 million.

Quoting Management: “SolarCity grew its customer base more than 243% in 2012 and surpassed $1 billion in solar energy systems deployed. Customers consistently choose SolarCity over alternatives, whether they are solar providers or utility companies. We sign up a new customer every five minutes,” said Lyndon Rive, CEO.
“SolarCity’s growth is proof that the company’s vertically-integrated model—to provide cleaner energy directly to customers at a discount to utility rates—is the key to attracting homeowners and businesses to solar,” continued Rive. “Furthermore, despite our triple-digit growth rate, we’ve scarcely begun to tap the potential of the distributed solar market. Less than half of one percent of energy consumers in the U.S. have adopted solar, and a massive growth opportunity remains.”

Key Stats (on next page)…