SolarCity (SCTY) PT Boosted at Baird After 'Strong' Q1

Baird analyst Ben Kallo boosted his price target on Outperform-rated SolarCity (NASDAQ: SCTY) to $80.00 (from $75.00) following 'strong' Q1 results.

Kallo comments, "SCTY posted a strong quarter operationally, booking record business and installing at the high end of its Q1 guidance. Not only did SCTY raise 2014 guidance, it also introduced 2015 guidance above our/consensus estimates. We remain buyers of the stock."

He noted Q1 performance metrics strong and P&L difficult to model as usual. SCTY. "SCTY reported installations of 82MW (at the top end of its guidance of 78MW-82MW) and beat our estimate of 80MW. Bookings of 136 beat our rough estimate 110. Non-GAAP EPS was ($0.82) vs. our/consensus estimates of ($0.78)/($0.71) - since the stock is most commonly valued off of retained value this is not an extremely important metric."

The company raised FY:2014 MW guidance which will be largely back-half loaded. "SCTY raised 2014 guidance to 500MW-550MW from 475MW-525MW. We have increased our deployment target from 505MW to 515MW. SCTY's Q2:14 guidance of 105-110MW was slightly less than our expectation of 120+. That said, 2H deployments should benefit from Nevada where SCTY is expanding from 400 to 800 employees"

He also note surprise 2015 guidance of 900MW-1GW, which was well above our estimate of 680MW and Street estimates in the 700MWs.

The firm is raising 2015 installation estimate to 840MW and will increase as SCTY makes progress on its ramp.

FY 2014 EPS goes from ($2.51) to ($3.99) and FY 2015 EPS goes from ($1.19) to ($3.51).

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on SolarCity click here. For more ratings news on SolarCity click here.

Shares of SolarCity closed at $47.71 yesterday.

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