The stock market looked poised to move lower yet again on Friday, building on losses from earlier in the week. Investors have had to endure constant and building concerns about interest rates and the bond market, which have started to have an impact on corporate profits. Stock index futures were down as much as half a percent early Friday before the market opened.
The latest steep declines in the stock market came from the solar energy field. SolarEdge Technologies (SEDG 2.81%) saw the biggest losses in the group, but peers like Enphase Energy (ENPH 3.80%) and Sunrun also suffered significant losses. Here's more on what's happening in the solar field and why investors in growth stocks across the market need to be worried.
SolarEdge gets eclipsed
Shares of SolarEdge Technologies plunged 29% in premarket trading early Friday morning. The self-proclaimed leader in smart energy technology announced preliminary financial results for the third quarter late Thursday afternoon, and investors were shocked at the extent of the slowdown that they saw.
SolarEdge dramatically cut its guidance for most of its key metrics for the third quarter. The company now expects sales of between $720 million and $730 million for the period, down from previous projections of between $880 million and $920 million. Adjusted gross margin could be as much as 10 percentage points lower than expected, with a new range of between 20.1% and 21.1%. SolarEdge believes that adjusted operating income will be just $12 million to $31 million, far below the $115 million to $135 million that it had previously expected.
SolarEdge CEO Zvi Lando explained that in the second half of the period, SolarEdge's European distributors canceled a number of orders unexpectedly and deferred others further into the future. Lando believes that inventory levels in European distribution channels had grown to unexpectedly high levels, while installation rates slowed. In particular, the SolarEdge CEO said installation rates in September failed to show their historical rise.
Even worse, SolarEdge believes the sluggishness will continue for the remainder of the year. The company sees fourth-quarter results being significantly lower than expected as well, suggesting that the problem isn't just a one-time phenomenon.
Shadows across the solar industry
Other solar stocks suffered in sympathy with SolarEdge. Enphase shares fell 14% in premarket trading, as investors were quick to infer that the same macroeconomic challenges facing SolarEdge should also apply to Enphase's business. Enphase also had to deal with an analyst downgrade from Thursday, with Scotiabank cutting its rating on the solar microinverter maker from sector outperform to sector perform and reducing its price target by $40 per share to $140.
The fallout trickled into the installation business, as Sunrun shares were down 8%. When component suppliers say that they're seeing reduced demand for their installer customers, it usually signals that the installers themselves are also facing tough business conditions.
Why concerns go beyond the solar industry
It'd be easy to try to isolate the problems SolarEdge and its peers are facing to the solar industry. High interest rates do affect the economics of solar installations, with financing costs eating into potential profits and sometimes making a proposed installation uneconomical.
However, there are plenty of businesses that have seen high levels of growth in past years because financing was cheap and easy to get. Now that easy money has disappeared, the customers of these high-growth companies have had to rein in their ambitious plans. That, combined with the need for many small growth-oriented businesses to have access to capital, makes high rates particularly problematic. That's why what SolarEdge is experiencing on Friday could become more common across the growth-stock universe in the weeks to come.
