Enphase, once the dominant microinverter manufacturer in the U.S. solar market, has struggled to achieve its quarterly goals since 2015. However, at least two investors still believe in the company and its ability to compete.
T.J. Rodgers, founder and former CEO of Cypress Semiconductor, and John Doerr, chairman of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, agreed to invest $10 million in the struggling firm, which could offset some portion of recent quarterly deficits. Rodgers will join Enphase’s Board of Directors as one of the conditions for his investment.
As pv magazine has reported extensively, Enphase has missed quarterly projections regularly since 2015, even when orders of its microinverters beat expectations. In the not-too-distant past, Enphase dominated the microinverter market.
Since Q2 2014, however, the company has steadily lost marketshare to competitor SolarEdge, which manufacturers a combined power optimizer/inverter product. A National Renewable Energy Laboratories report showed decreasing costs/watt for SolarEdge. In fact, in Q1 of 2016, NREL reported that Enphase’s products cost approximately 50% more per watt than SolarEdge’s combination product.
By Q3 2014, SolarEdge surpassed Enphase in the number of megawatts shipped, and as of Q1 last year was shipping approximately four times as many megawatts as the microinverter manufacturer. To offset missed revenue targets, Enphase trimmed its workforce by 11% in September and sold its residential operations-and-maintenance arm in December.
Enphase says it will use some of the $10 million on consulting services to advise them on now to improve its operational performance and boost support for global demand for its products.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.