Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by for Emeren Group Limited's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Please note that we are recording today's conference call. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Yujia Zhai, Managing Director of The Blueshirt Group. Please go ahead, Mr. Zhai. Thank you, operator, and hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our first quarter 2023 results. We've released our shareholder letter after the market close today. It's available on our website at ir.emeren.com. We also provided a supplemental presentation that's posted on our IR website, that we will reference during our prepared remarks. On the call with me today are Mr. Yumin Liu, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Ke Chen, Chief Financial Officer, and Mr. John Yuan, CEO of North America. Before we continue, please turn to Slide 2. Let me remind you that remarks made during this call may include predictions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking. These forward-looking statements represent Emeren Group's current judgments for the future. However, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ significantly. Those risks are described under risk factors and elsewhere in Emeren Group's filings with the SEC. Please do not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect Emeren Group's opinions only as of the date of this call. Emeren Group is not obliged to update you on any revisions to these forward-looking statements. Also, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during the conference call are in US dollars. With that, let me now turn the call over to Mr. Yumin Liu. Yumin? Thank you, Yujia. Good day, everyone. Thank you for joining our call today. I will begin by presenting a high-level overview of our first quarter 2023 results, followed by an in-depth discussion on our guidance. Ke, the company CFO, will provide a comprehensive review of our financial results for Q1. Additionally, we are delighted to have our North American CEO, John, join us for the QA session. To start off, we closed Q1 with revenue of $12.9 million, gross margin of 12.4%, and EBITDA of $1.8 million. Our Q1 revenue reflected solid contribution from our IPP and EPC business, driven partially by our recent acquisitions. However, delays in receipt of the final approvals and more conservative judgment in change of control in our RTP product sales business resulted in no revenue recognition during Q1 2023. In May, we completed the sale of 58 megawatt solar farm projects in Poland. This will be recognized in our Q2 results. Looking forward, under a more conservative judgment in change of control, we expect to recognize revenue for RTP product sales starting from Q2, and more in the second half, due to the timing of the expected final approvals of pending product sales. Accordingly, we expect our Q2 revenue to be about $38 million-$40 million, and gross margin to be 32%-35%. Our second half results will be driven by the expected closings of over 300 megawatts of product sales in Europe and U.S. For the full year, we iterated our revenue expectation to be in the range of $154 million-$174 million. Gross margin to be approximately 30%, and net income to be between $22 million-$26 million. Despite the temporary delays mentioned earlier, our product development business remains very strong fundamentally. We are experiencing sustained, strong demand for solar projects on global scale. We entered 2023 with 3 gigawatts of high quality, mid-to-late stage project pipeline, and we anticipate to monetize about 500 megawatt of projects in 2023. We are targeting to grow this pipeline to 4 gigawatts by the end of 2023. Beyond 2023, we are targeting to monetize a minimum 500-600 megawatts a year. In China, we are making ongoing progress in our realignment strategy to the rest of the world as develop, build, own or sell, compared to the original strategy of develop, build, own, as IPP. In conjunction, we are refocusing our efforts to five coastal provinces that have the most favorable power prices, supported by strong economy and regulatory environment. Our plan is to divest all of our solar assets outside of the designated five provinces, as well as some assets within the specific target markets. This strategic move will help strengthen our balance sheet. In conclusion, we remain excited about revenue growth this year and beyond, driven by our strong product pipeline. We are well positioned in the world's fastest growing solar markets that are benefiting from increasing demand for clean energy, higher PPA prices, and supportive government policies. The future of solar energy is extremely promising, and we are positioned to fully capitalize on the accelerating adoption of solar technology across the globe. With our exceptional expertise in developing and operating solar projects, extensive network of industry partnerships, a strong financial position, we are making great strides towards our goal to become a top global solar company. We are thrilled about the bright future of the solar energy, and are excited to be at the forefront of this incredible transformation towards a more sustainable future. Now, let me turn the call over to our CFO, Ke Chen, to discuss our financial performance in detail. Ke, please. Thank you, Yumin. Thanks everyone again for joining us on the call today. I will now go over our financial results for the first quarter. Our revenue of $12.9 million nearly tripled compared to Q1 2022, and it decreased by $12.8 million compared to Q4 2022. The sequential decrease in revenue was primarily due to the zero NTP revenue during the quarter, as well as lower revenue from EPC business. IPP at Q1 is typically our seasonally slowest quarter. Gross profit was $1.6 million, and gross margin was 12.4%, down from $6 million in Q4 2022, and up from $1.1 million in Q1 2022. The lower sequential gross margin was mainly due to more lower margin EPC service recognized in Q1. Operating expenses were $4.6 million, down from $7.2 million in Q4, 2022, and up from $3.4 million in Q1, 2022. The sequential lower operating expenses remaining attributable to lower G&A expenses, primarily due to a one-time expense incurred in Q4, 2022, related to the acquisition costs of Emeren Italy, changing auditor and other one-time costs related to rebranding. Net loss attributed to Emeren Group Ltd's common shareholders was $0.2 million, compared to $1.7 million in Q4, 2022, and $1.7 million in Q1, 2022. Net loss attributed to Emeren Group Ltd's common shareholders per ADS was 0, compared to $0.03 in Q4, 2022, and $0.03 in Q1, 2022. Cash using operating activity was $23.7 million, which was primarily for the continued development of Poland and Hungary COD projects. Cash using investing activity was $1.9 million. Cash using financing activity was $16.2 million. In terms of our financial position, cash and cash equivalent at end of Q1 2023 was $66.7 million, compared to $107.1 million at the end of 2022. The decrease was primarily due to a higher cash use in operating activities, as well as finance activity of $16.2 million for share buyback and finance leasing loan payment. Our net asset value, or NAV, is approximately $5.85 per ADS. Our debt-to-asset ratio at end of Q1 2023 was 11.3%, compared to 11.1% at end of Q4 2022. Moving to our share buyback program. We purchased 13.2 million of our common shares during the quarter and intend to proceed with the execution of the share buyback program with 17 million remaining. Now, we would like to open up the call for any questions. Operator, please go ahead. Thank you. To ask a question, please press star one one on your touchtone telephone. Again, that's star one one on your telephone to ask a question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Philip Shen of Roth MKM. Your question, please, Philip. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. First one is on your 4 gigawatt pipeline target by year end next year. For that incremental gigawatt, what would you expect that mix of business to come from or to be? You know, how much Europe versus the U.S. versus China or rest of world? Thanks. Thank you, Phil. That the major part of the pipeline will continue coming from the strong demand in Europe. I will say the current percentage or the current portfolio percentage from Europe remains to be similar to the end of the year. I would say in the 4 gigawatts, I would expect about 3 gigawatts will come from Europe, the another major part will be from U.S. and China represent about around 5% in the whole portfolio. Okay, great. Thanks, Yumin. In terms of Europe, you know, power pricing is down meaningfully. It seems like that's not impacting your pipeline or maybe it could. Do you expect any projects to become either uneconomic or more challenged with the lower pricing? Do you think the uncertainty for gas pricing due to the war and so forth could, you know, and should still drive very healthy demand? Thanks. In fact, we look at this thing from 2 folds. One is that the current merchant price, although it's absolutely significantly lower compared to 12 months ago, but it is still higher than two, three years ago. In most people, including us, our financial model, if you look at two years ago, in normal case, with the merchant curve, you talk about EUR 0.60, EUR 0.70, EUR 60, EUR 70 per megawatt hour. Okay? Now the merchant price is higher than that price, and the demand is a lot bigger or stronger in the market. At the same time, we look at, on the supply side, we absolutely have seen the drop of the CapEx. Just recently, as everybody knows, that the polysilicon price goes down, and the module price continue goes down, and the whole overall BOS price from the suppliers are going down. On these two points, we do not see any projects, literally any project, going uneconomical. We still see high bid, high demand on the high-quality projects. Okay, thank you. One last one for me, staying with this topic here. Can you talk about the recent, auctions or sales processes that you've been hosting? How have they been, in terms of numbers of bidders, quality of the bidders? You know, maybe you can talk about the dynamics in the U.S. as well as Europe, you know, and maybe how that, sales process might be changing. You know, do you expect to see, you know, more and more bidders still? You know, that, over the past couple of years, that's been the trend, you know, more and more kind of, buyers for the projects. Have you seen that plateau, or do you continue to see that grow? maybe just talk through and characterize the demand that you're seeing in general. Thanks. This is a very interesting question. Very good question, by the way, Phil. I will cover Europe first and ask John to cover the U.S. part. Absolutely, in general, including U.S., we still see a big demand, okay? In the market, even in some market, people predicted that the starting after summer, the demand will go slower or the bidders will be less. I see currently the demand is very strong and for any portfolios, as we expect to have at least 15 plus transactions to be closed within the next eight months. The current ongoing ones, either we do it by ourselves or we hire a broker to do it for us. Literally, we see a dozen at minimum, or in most cases, two, three dozens bidding seriously onto our deals. Okay? For certain market, for certain portfolios, smaller or big, at the end, we always struggle ourselves to pick the best ones. Normally, we go with two, three, and at the end, we definitely pick one and we are disappointed more. The trend in general, as I see, it's a timing issue. Now, it is still very, very good as money inflow into the solar market, as I see, it's stronger than the people standing on the sidelines. John, would you comment on the U.S. part in some detail? John, are you on mute? I'm here. Go ahead. Mm-hmm. Can you hear me? Yes. Perfect. Hey, Phil, it's important to make the distinction that in the U.S., we sell NTP projects, so physically, they have not yet been built, but they have all of their statutory rights to be built. By definition, the buyer that we go to is a pretty sophisticated buyer in the sense that they take on some level of engineering, design, procurement, execution, and some of them do that internally. Some of them have very strong relationships with panel manufacturers or engineering, you know, providers and construction providers. It's not like you just turn that spigot on and instantly become both a financial, you know, a financial wheelhouse and a construction engineering management and asset operator. We focus on those accounts. The number stays a little bit more constant. While there might be financial buyers that are buying assets in the secondary market, or we, you know, it's not technically I guess it could be called a secondary market, of already constructed assets that have some operating history. That's the first point. The second segregation is there are certain markets where we're challenged just because it's a, either a regulated market and folks don't play there, or it is an unregulated market and folks don't play there. We know which accounts like certain types of assets, whether community or utility, regulated, unregulated, you know, the different power pools and markets that folks wish to own assets in. That could be the distinction between the unregulated arm of a utility or a player that's highly sophisticated because they have their own power purchasing and capability. That's a subtle kind of subcategory. Just in general, I would say the real answer to the question is, there's more demand than the number of people that we're comfortable taking deals to. Meaning, if there's a potential pool of 40, we go to the 7 or 6 that really know the markets, and we know that they like the market. As Yumin hinted at, you know, in his comment, I don't need to go to everybody and have most people upset that they didn't win something with us. What we want is a high-quality pool of folks who know the market and can execute. You know, it's not just getting the highest bid, it's who can actually execute in a particular market. We don't have perfect insight there, but we have, you know, decent, you know, decent data on who's doing what, where, based on talking to the accounts and talking and seeing what they're doing engineering-wise. I'd say right now, still, demand outstrips our supply. If we had, you know, 5 x the number of projects, we'd be able to sell them. That, that's the quick and dirty answer. Phil, I would like to add, like John said here, in Europe, also, we focus on RTP sales. Again, right now, people are still chasing high-quality, RTP-ready projects. The demand is still very strong. Okay. Thanks to you all. I'll pass it on. Thank you, Phil. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Donovan Schafer of Northland Capital Markets. Your question, please, Donovan. Hey, guys, thanks for taking the question. I first want to start with the mid to late stage pipeline, where you have it broken out by country. You know, you give a range of expected expected sale dates or the date when a project could come online, you know, and generate revenue as an IPP project. It looks like, you know, you have ranges that for quite a few countries, you have a range starting in 2023. We've got Poland, Hungary, Spain, France, Italy, the US, and China. I know, you know, in Poland, Hungary, the US, and China, you've got some projects there, you know, that could really be sold at any moment if the price is right. I'm less familiar with the projects you have on the ground in Spain, France, and Italy. Could you elaborate on those projects and what the likelihood is that there could be sales in those countries in 2023? You know, are they existing. I mean, I don't, they're not IPP assets. Are they all just sort of NTP, and you've got some that are tied up with a bow that could be sold? Or what is kind of that layout or the your situation in Spain, France, and Italy for 2023? Okay. Thank you, Donovan. That, as I mentioned, in the remaining eight months of the year, we expect to have a minimum of 15, 16 different portfolio sales in those countries. That include not only the country you mentioned, Poland, Hungary, but also in Italy, in Spain, in France, in Germany. In almost every single market, we have projects. We are setting those projects, in most cases, as RTP. You know, RTP is the word the European people mostly, most likely to use instead of NTP. Most of the deals are RTP sales in the countries, as I mentioned. In China, it's the only country we sell deals as a COD. In the U.S. You're. Pardon. You're saying you actually expect that there'd be RTP sales in Spain, France, Germany, and Italy this year? Yes, absolutely. Oh, great! Okay. Fascinating. Okay. sorry, I cut you off, if there's more. Also another point, Donovan, that as you see our business model, as we listed all the details of the product portfolio in each country, we not only have the RTP sale model, but we also have IPP model. In the cases of some portfolios, we are seriously considering to build those ourselves. In some countries, we just will turn, we say, monetize, we'll turn those development portfolios into the IPP assets. Okay. Donovan, in Italy, we also have development service type of business. We help third party to develop the projects. Right. Right. Okay. I want to talk about, I don't think we've touched on this for maybe a little while, is the idea of kind of, you know, having a lot of these countries, there's this kind of land grab going on, but instead of scrambling to grab land, you're trying to scramble to get to the front of the line for interconnections. That can involve putting down a deposit, and that was sort of the strength of your cash position before. You know, cash has come down a decent amount, but, you know, you can see that that's also being deployed in projects, so you get kind of assets in, you know, projects, you know, in process on the balance sheet. I'm curious if you can kind of paint a picture for us about how does this, like, in a perfect world, I wish I could, like, look at a map and see, okay, you know, think of it as like chips on a table, but it's a map. It's like, okay, you know, Emeren Group has this many millions deposited in this spot, holding, you know, this interconnection and this many here, holding that, so on and so forth. Absent that, I'm wondering if you can kind of somehow paint a picture for us of where that cash is for interconnection deposits. Of course, I mean, it wouldn't be restricted cash. I'm guessing maybe it's tied up in the project assets, but can you give us a sense for how much money is deployed in that kind of a deposit-like capacity, you know, out there? Yes. - holding in place in some of these? That's indeed sitting in the project assets on the balance sheet. It's roughly between $18 million and $20 million. Okay. It's between 18 and. Thank you. Between $18 million and $20 million. Yeah. That's all refundable. Just kind of holding places. Yeah, and it's all refundable. Okay. Is there a, let's see. I guess it would vary by country, so I'll have to dig into it with some more detail with you guys offline. It'd be interesting to see how that translates, like I said, almost if you could allocate that $20 million on a map and say, you know, with just $20 million, we've got X number of megawatts of prime real estate, you know, under our belt. The I know that's not an easy thing to do on the call. Let me dive in here, just to give you a quick background about the deposit and even the cash use. I'll ask her to give you the cash use in detail. On the deposit side, U.S. is the major spending of this $18 million-$20 million, as U.S., literally speaking, is the only country demanding big interconnection deposit. Okay? Other countries, like in Spain and in some European countries like Spain, they do require interconnection deposit, but they use that in the form of the bond from insurance companies to cover those. The deposit in the whole European market is smaller than the total use in the U.S. That's the first point. The second is, the major part of the cash use was due to the decision by the management of sponsoring the construction of the projects in Poland and Hungary. Together with the closing of the sales of those projects in Poland and Hungary, we expect the cash will be coming back within the year. Okay, great. Okay. That's the confidence that we have a very strong financial position of the company, although I believe you asked the question based on our current cash below $70 million. We are expecting the big cash inflow from the execution of the sales on those projects under construction are being completely completed. Okay, great. You know, with the new accountant and the restatement of fourth quarter, you know, I think there was a project in Poland that, you know, probably looks like it's most likely gonna get, you know, it may be the 58 or 38 megawatt project you already mentioned. You know, if that was sort of seemed to be very nearly or effectively sort of done in the fourth quarter, then I'm sort of assuming the associated cash use would have already been. That's not something that would be restated for the fourth quarter because the cash side of things would stay the same. Am I correct in assuming the incremental, you know, $20 some odd million in cash use in the first quarter for projects in Hungary and Poland, that that's actually for incremental projects, you know, in addition to the Poland project in the fourth quarter that was? Yes. Yeah, Donovan, you're right. Okay. With the Poland 58 megawatt project, we received the full payment. Great A few weeks ago. So that's not- Okay R elated to the cash we used in the first quarter. The first quarter cash usage is this other Poland COD project and also Hungary COD project, which you may just mention, we're gonna monetize those and receive cash back from those projects, in the coming quarter and the second half. Okay, great. My last question is just with, I'm not sure kind of what the exact right language to use is here, but I know, you know, you're currently listed in the U.S. as an ADR, and you do the kind of foreign filing, you know, 20-F and 6-Ks. As I understand it, I think it's like an SEC requirement or something that I believe now that you are-. Y our investors are majority U.S. investors, you're gonna be required to do, like, a, you know, regular 10-Q. Is there anything more to it? Is it just that you have to do those filings instead, or is there a more formal process, and does it involve actually go, you know, not being an ADR anymore and being like a direct-listed security? That's different from the direct listing. First of all, there is a formal process, we have to do 10-Q based on the shareholder structure. That's a formal process. We will expect to starting to it in Q1 2024. Again, in terms of direct listing, that's a different process from ADR. Okay. Okay. All right, great. I'll take the rest of my questions offline. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Donovan. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Pavel Molchanov of Raymond James. Your question, please, Pavel. Thanks for taking the question. First, on your U.S. portfolio, we just saw the guidance from the Treasury about what needs to happen for projects to get bonus tax credits for local content, as well as low-income community bonuses. Based on your existing project pipeline in the U.S., do you anticipate being eligible for either the local content, or the low-income community, or both? Both. Yes, Pavel, both. On what portion? Yep. Yeah, on both. We obviously, you know, when it was just guidance and it wasn't actually stated, we were still building into our sales structures, upside related to both of those components, right? At the end of the day, what really ends up happening is the buyers themselves have the best visibility into their own procurement, how they're gonna manage domestic content, what the costs of implementing domestic content are gonna be, the risk of tariffs on the other side, the cost of acquiring low income or LMI offtake, which obviously is positive and it pays for itself, and is a good thing. But that reflects itself in stronger bids to begin with. They internalize. It's kinda like trading when you can't really tell if a bid has already, you know, got the Fed rate hikes or moves already embedded in the bid, but that pricing is priced in. Beyond that, we also structure into our deals upside related to them achieving those specific, whether it's going from 30%- 40% ITC basis or achieving a certain offtake, you know, mix or matrix in the, you know, in the offtake. To be frank, you know, I find deals are best negotiated right up to the point of sale, and chasing somebody later for things that are underneath the hood of their shop, like their exact tax equity deal and how they monetize credits and all that, I'd rather not. You know, it's just a, it's more complicated to figure out post-facto or, you know, post-sale, exactly what ended up happening with their financing structure. We do, you know, we do capture that upside in the form of specifically calling out, if you get 40% ITC, we get, you know, we split the benefit or have some upside related to it. First and foremost, for competitively bid projects, a lot of that is baked into the bids, which is good. It's, it's kind of a little bit of both. Okay. It's worth a lot. Okay. I mean, it's worth a lot, you know, it's worth to us, it's worth, you know, without being too specific, it's worth tens of millions of dollars of extra developer fee over the next, you know, X number of single digit years. Yeah, Pavel, we just saw this recently, the price jumped in recent weeks, so for our projects. Let me follow up with kind of a CFO question, I suppose. Until today's earnings release, you reported Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted Net Income, and today, I do not believe you included either of those numbers. Is that deliberate? If so, why did you change that reporting method? It's just that we don't have, any adjusted in this quarter, so most of them are just GAAP. That's not deliberate. It's just this quarter, everything is GAAP, so. Okay, you will be publishing Adjusted EBITDA in the future when you have some special. If we, yeah, some special items. Yes. Okay, that's clear. Okay, thank you, guys. Thank you, Pavel. Thank you. Again, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Again, that's star one one on your telephone to ask a question. Our next question comes from the line of Amit Dayal of H.C. Wainwright. Your question, please, Amit. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Most of my questions have been asked, guys, but, you know, just a few from my side. You know, how much of the 2Q revenue guidance is already delivered? I will say almost, over 60% has been delivered. Okay. Thank you, Ke. You know, with respect to the 300 megawatts you are targeting to close in the second half this year, you know, what are the risks we should be aware of in terms of these getting pushed out or, you know, not coming through, all of it not coming through this year? I do not expect any of those not coming through. For example, the ones, as I mentioned in my earlier early talk, is we are waiting for government approvals. For the ones we already signed the contract, we file for government approvals, for example, in the country of Hungary, that the government will give us within four to six weeks, the approval. That's one example. We are, as we explained the last time, when we filed the 20-F, we are, the whole company-wide, taking a more conservative approach, recognizing revenue at the moment we all believe should be recognizable. Okay. That is how we delay the recognition to the following quarter. Now we do not see anyone which will fall through or slip through into 2024 yet. Okay. Thank you, Amit. Just last one from me. You know, you touched on some of the cash-related discussion earlier, but, you know, with sort of the visibility you have right now, where do you expect to end 2023 with respect to your cash position? Yes, Amit, we expect very significant increase from current level by end of this year. Can you share a range, maybe, or? Yes. Is that all? It's around $90 million-$100 million. Okay, understood. Thank you, guys. I will take my other questions offline. Thank you. Thank you, Amit. Thank you. Seeing no more questions in the queue, that concludes our call for today. Thank you, everyone. You may disconnect at this time. Thank you, Latif. My pleasure.