2015 Annual Report on Form 10-K for the Fiscal Year Ended January 3, 2016 (The “2015 Annual Report”) Online and Vote Online
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CORPORATE HEADQUARTERS SunPower Corporation 77 Rio Robles, San Jose California 95134 USA 408.240.5500 sunpower.com Annual Report 2015 ©2016 SunPower Corporation. All Rights Reserved. SUNPOWER and the SUNPOWER logo are registered trademarks of SunPower Corporation in the U.S. and other countries as well. sp_annual_report_2015_cover_print.indd 1 3/8/16 4:34 PM EXECUTIVE OFFICERS Thomas H. Werner Changing the Way Our World is Powered President, CEO and Chairman of the Board As one of the world’s most innovative and sustainable energy Lisa Bodensteiner Executive Vice President companies, SunPower provides residential, commercial and and General Counsel Charles D. Boynton utility customers with complete solar solutions, services and Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Smart Energy choices. Our global customers rely on our Eric Branderiz Senior Vice President, more than 30 years of proven experience. From the first flip Corporate Controller and Chief Accounting Officer of the switch, SunPower delivers maximum value and superb Marty T. Neese Chief Operating Officer performance throughout the long life of every solar system. SunPower provides clean energy through residential, Douglas J. Richards Executive Vice President commercial and power plant Administration Headquartered in Silicon Valley, SunPower has about 8,000 installations worldwide. Howard Wenger President dedicated, customer-focused employees in Africa, Asia, Business Units Australia, Europe, North and South America. Since 2011, BOARD OF DIRECTORS we’ve been majority-owned by Total, the fourth largest Thomas H. Werner publicly-traded energy company. Chairman of the Board Arnaud Chaperon Director We passionately believe that our company’s achievements and Bernard Clément Director our individual contributions are making the world a better place. Denis Giorno Director We are driven to innovate, persevere, blaze new trails, and Daniel Lauré Director deliver on our promises. We are changing the way our world is Catherine Lesjak powered and empowering customers to realize the potential of Director Thomas R. McDaniel clean, renewable solar energy. Director Humbert de Wendel Director Pat Wood III Director sp_annual_report_2015_cover_print.indd 2 3/8/16 4:34 PM Dear Shareholders: We are in the midst of a global transition to renewable energy as a primary source of electricity. At SunPower, we’re proud to be a driving force of this transformation. We closed out 2015 with record non-GAAP financial results, released market leading products, doubled our commercial Americas bookings, gained share in residential and commercial segments, and completed the world’s largest solar power plant. We also launched 8point3 Energy Partners, our growth-oriented limited partnership with First Solar to own, operate and acquire solar energy generation projects. The fundamentals for solar have never been better and SunPower is well positioned to be a leader in the solar industry’s next phase of growth – mass adoption. Adoption and Momentum Solar adoption is at an all-time high and climbing, with global shipments in 2015 up 34 percent from the previous year. We estimate that the amount of solar installed around the world is enough to power 140 million homes – more than all the homes in the United States and then some. Total cumulative solar deployment has grown almost fifty-fold over the past decade and solar is leading the way in helping to lower our carbon footprint by keeping nearly 580 million tons of carbon pollutants out of the air since 2006 alone. Given the momentum of this technology, it’s not a question of whether the world turns to solar as the primary source of electricity - it’s a matter of how fast it happens. Looking forward, we’re forecasting global solar demand to approximately double over the coming five years with annual industry shipments exceeding 100 gigawatts (GW) by 2020. For perspective, just one GW is equal to about two coal-fired power plants. The scale and continued growth of the solar power industry is being driven by three interrelated factors: cost reduction, global market expansion and policy support. The solar industry is scaling and innovating across the entire value chain in both distributed generation and power plant applications, driving down the cost of power to the point where solar is increasingly competitive with conventional sources of electricity. More competitive solar power is driving market growth in all key regions, with particularly strong growth expected in the U.S. and in new emerging markets. In the U.S., solar power capacity additions last year already exceeded those of natural gas fired generation according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Policy Actions Support Continued Growth At the end of last year, we saw a number of critical developments that reinforced the central role of solar power in the evolving mainstream energy mix. The reality of clean solar power at prices competitive with conventional electricity galvanized support from regulators and policymakers worldwide. 2015 was a landmark year for solar policy with California’s Net Energy Metering 2.0, the U.S. Clean Power Plan, extension of the U.S. solar investment tax credit and the Paris COP21 agreement. These policies will create a market structure supportive of the transition to solar power as a mainstream energy source. Given the unprecedented global market opportunity, we’re planning to aggressively expand our market share and footprint. In business for more than 30 years, we offer our residential, commercial and utility customers key differentiators – innovation, experience, value and sustainability – that help drive customer choice. At the core of what we do is a relentless effort to provide all of our customers with a seamless experience from start to finish. We were proud to receive the 2015 Customer Experience Excellence Award from Temkin Group, an industry leader and one of the most highly regarded customer experience firms. Innovation at Our Core Headquartered in the heart of Silicon Valley, we consider ourselves first and foremost a technology company, as evidenced by more than 600 patents. Technology remains the basis for our competitive market advantage. We’re continuing to invest in our record-setting module technology while expanding our range of complete energy solutions. SunPower innovators have consistently raised the bar for the industry, and will continue to push the boundaries of performance and quality for our customers. We set a new world record when the SunPower® X- Series solar panel achieved production efficiencies of more than 22 percent, far exceeding conventional solar panel efficiencies that range from 15 to 18 percent. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a federal lab that rigorously evaluates renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies, tested and verified this accomplishment. The SunPower X-Series solar panel produces 70 percent more energy in the same space over 25 years compared with typical panels and is the world’s most efficient solar panel available to homeowners. Following the acquisition of start-up Cogenra Solar, we introduced a new line of solar panels, our Performance or P-Series. While the SunPower E-Series and X-Series remain the best choices for customers with limited roof area or for those who simply want the very best in performance and reliability, our new Performance Series panels provide a strong value proposition with lower up-front cost for power plant projects in non-OECD countries and for customers with unconstrained roof area. Using methods perfected over the past three decades, SunPower combined Cogenra’s innovative panel assembly approach with our proven module technologies to create products that meet our stringent quality and reliability standards. We are backing this new panel with our industry-leading combined 25-year product and power warranty. Complementing our best-in-class solar panel technology are new panel mounted microinverters, utilizing technology we acquired in 2014 from our SolarBridge acquisition. The majority of panels we ship to the residential channel now include an AC microinverter. This product can dramatically reduce installation times and also optimizes the performance of the system. We continue to invest in developing complete solar energy solutions. As the solar industry matures and becomes a mainstream source of energy, established channels such as electric utilities will become more active in supplying solar energy to their customers. By packaging all of the required complements into a truly integrated “plug and play” solution, we can enable a large number of channel partners to serve their existing customers using SunPower technology. Last year we introduced the Helix™ platform, a game-changing product for the commercial business that builds on our legacy of complete solar solutions. The Helix system is the world’s first fully-integrated commercial solar solution. Designed for the rooftop, carport and commercial ground mount markets, Helix systems deliver significantly lower cost and improved reliability, while accelerating installation times. Proven Experience and Long-Term Value Regardless of the business segment, customers turn to SunPower because of our proven experience and long- term value. From the moment it's switched on, a SunPower system generates more energy than conventional panels and keeps providing value when other brands fade. We’re proud of our global customer portfolio. This includes being a trusted partner to strong well-known brands including six of the top ten solar corporate users and eight of the top ten home builders. About 500,000 residential consumers and hundreds of commercial customers utilize SunPower systems every day. During 2015, we completed Solar Star, the world’s largest solar power plant project, which is now owned and operated by BHE Renewables. We deliver what we promise and we stand behind our work. We’ll continue to build on our track record of designing, building and operating global power plants as we’ve expanded our development asset base to more than 7 GW and have development teams on the ground in Chile, Mexico, Turkey and South Africa.