SolarCity Corp (SCTY) Shares Nosedive After Delay In Earnings

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SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY) surprised Wall Street on Monday by delaying its fourth quarter earnings. The Elon Musk-backed company postponed its Q4 earnings release to March 3 after the market close. SolarCity said the delay was mainly due to the accounting delays related to its recent acquisitions, and a change in overhead allocation related to an increase in megawatts deployed. Investors reacted to the delay. Shares fell as much as 6.9% yesterday in after-hours trading. The reaction on Twitter ranged from furious to humorous.

SolarCity releases partial, but positive Q4 results

However, SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY) did release partial earnings. The solar installer said its fourth quarter revenues jumped 87% YoY to $47.3 million. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters were expecting $43.4 million in revenues. The Wall Street consensus anticipates 55 cents in the fourth quarter earnings. For the full-year 2013, analysts forecast a net loss of $1.79 per share with $159.69 million in revenues. SolarCity said Monday that it installed 103 megawatts of new solar systems during the fourth quarter, beating its own guidance of 101 megawatts.

SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY) is the biggest U.S. residential solar installer. The company forecasts fewer panel installations in the current quarter (78-82MW), which is seasonally weak due to the cold weather. However, the San Mateo-based company reiterated its full-year 2014 installation target of 475-525MW. SolarCity said it witnessed record bookings in January, indicating that second quarter 2014 installations will be particularly strong.

SolarCity’s retained value forecast jumps in December quarter

The value of SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY)’s contracts, also called retained value forecast, jumped from $846 million in Q3 to $1.05 billion in Q4.  Analysts consider retained value forecast a more important metric than SolarCity’s revenue because of the company’s heavy dependence on such contracts. At the end of Q4, SolarCity had almost $2 billion in remaining contracted payments, a 15% increase over the third quarter.

SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY) shares opened Monday on a positive note. The stock gained 2.76% to $80.72 at 9:38 AM EST.

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