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Array Technologies, Inc. Q1 FY2022 Earnings Call

Array Technologies, Inc. (ARRY)

Earnings Call FY2022 Q1 Call date: 2022-04-05 Concluded

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Cody Mueller Head of Investor Relations

Good evening. And thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Array Technologies first quarter 2022 results. Slides for today's presentation are available on the Investor Relations section of our website, arraytechinc.com. During this conference call, management will make forward-looking statements based on current expectations and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from our forward-looking statements if any of our key assumptions are incorrect, because of other factors discussed in today's earnings press release, the comments made during this conference call or in our latest reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which can be found on our website, arraytechinc.com. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. Today's presentation also includes references to non-GAAP financial measures. You should refer to the information contained in the company's first quarter press release for definitional information and reconciliations of historical non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP financial measures. With that, let me turn the call over to Kevin Hostetler, Array Technologies' CEO.

Thanks, Cody, and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's call. In addition to Cody, I'm also joined by Nipul Patel, our Chief Financial Officer. I'm excited to join you on my first Array Technologies earnings call and on day 23 as the CEO of Array. Now there is still a lot of work I need to do and much more time to be spent with employees, customers, suppliers and investors in order to give my full assessment on the state of the company. But I did want to provide some early observations about the company and the industry before turning it over to Nipul for a more detailed discussion of the quarter and our revised outlook for 2022. First, and I think this is critical context for everything else that is going on, my decision to come to Array was largely influenced by two fundamental factors. One, the world is transitioning to renewable energy. Combating climate change is no longer a niche pursuit by a few; it is now core to the identity of the world's largest governments, corporations, and asset managers. And there is simply no feasible way to meet the stated goals of these entities without significant increases in the amount of solar energy produced. And two, Array is positioned incredibly well to be a global leader in the solar energy transition. Array has differentiated products that more and more customers are selecting. It has the bankability of over 30 years in the industry and has an asset-light business model that enables quick and nimble scalability. Now, I recognize these are not new statements to many of you. But I start there because despite some of the near-term challenges within our industry, when I think about the long-term horizon and companies and industries that are poised to make a lasting change in the world, while at the same time driving shareholder value. Array operates in a unique space. Since joining, I have not only experienced firsthand these differentiated capabilities, but have also been able to deepen my appreciation for the complexity of the problems we are solving and the employees who are solving them. As many of you know, I've now spent decades leading engineered product companies. And I will tell you, experiences taught me if you can find a great product, serving a growing and necessary market, supported by a skilled and dedicated workforce, you have the key elements of a formula to drive strong shareholder value. This being said, it's also important to realize we must execute in the near term in order to continue to build the trust of our customers and investors, which we will need for the opportunity to make that lasting change. Over the last year, an extremely volatile cost and logistics landscape coupled with an uneven and constantly shifting demand profile has made execution a bit more challenging. And let's be clear, over the next few quarters, the landscape is not going to get much easier. The AD/CVD investigation has placed uncertainty around the timing of some of our projects and has vastly increased the complexity of managing our supply chain and logistics. Adding to this, the conflict in Ukraine has slowed supply chains throughout Europe, and we are seeing the direct impact of this on projects in Europe as component supplies are rerouted. While these issues will reduce our outlook for 2022, they are far from unmanageable. My experience, coupled with the steps that the newly reformed senior leadership team have already taken leave me confident we will execute on what is within our control. This includes managing not only our material and logistics costs, but also aligning our SG&A spend with changing volume levels. It also means we will need to have a laser focus on working capital management to ensure we don't incur inefficiencies as projects shift left and right. This near-term market uncertainty presents an opportunity for us to further differentiate ourselves from our competitors. To this end, we will focus intently on working with our customers to solve their module challenges by playing an active and flexible role in their rapid system redesign efforts, all while delivering our products on time with an unparalleled customer experience. Finally, it is also an opportunity to identify and focus on customers and suppliers who are truly willing to be partners. Industry challenges like this require collaboration and a sharing of risk. We are certainly ready to do our part and we'll be evaluating which partners are willing to do the same. Array has made a lot of progress since becoming a public company a little over 1.5 years ago, but we still have room for improvement. Over the coming months, I'll continue my comprehensive review of Array's operating systems and core business processes to further identify areas in which we can drive operational efficiencies. I look forward to updating you all on the progress of my reviews in our next quarter's call. With that, I'd like to give a heartfelt thank you to the employees of Array who have been extremely welcoming and turn the call over to Nipul.

Thanks, Kevin. Speaking for the management team and employees of Array, we are excited to have you on board. I want to touch on a few topics today. First, I'll walk through the results for the quarter, which finished better than our expectations. Then I'll provide some color on AD/CVD and the work we have been doing over the last few weeks in order to quantify the impact to our business. And lastly, in light of the impact we are seeing from the investigation, I will provide an updated guidance range for 2022. With that, I'll turn to Slide 6 to discuss the quarter. Revenues for the first quarter increased 21% to $300.6 million compared to $248.2 million for the prior year period. The $301 million in revenue reflects $251 million from the legacy Array business and $50 million from the STI business. Revenue in the first quarter of 2021 also included approximately $40 million of ITC-related orders. So excluding those orders, our legacy Array business is up 21% year-over-year. It also represents the third consecutive quarter of revenue growth and a record for a quarter without any ITC-related orders. Gross profit decreased to $26.6 million from $46.2 million in the prior year period due to the expected impacts of the lower margin backlog in the legacy Array business as well as a low-margin STI project in the U.S., which had a negative impact. Gross margin decreased from 18.6% to 8.8%. Gross margin for the legacy Array business was 8.5% and represents the second consecutive quarter of margin improvement as it is up 380 basis points from the fourth quarter. The STI business had gross margin of 10.7% in the quarter, which was negatively impacted by higher labor costs in projects where it was providing the construction. This was especially true of a large project in the U.S., where it has significant construction cost overruns. Additionally, the war in Ukraine slowed supply chain availability in Europe, which necessitated a change in the location where materials were procured, raising the logistics costs. Operating expenses increased to $58.7 million compared to $30.8 million during the same period in the prior year. The higher expense was primarily related to a $16.7 million increase in amortization expense related to the STI acquisition. Excluding that impact, the increase is primarily due to the addition of STI Norland in addition to higher payroll-related costs due to an increase in headcount as well as higher professional fees associated with the acquisition. These increases were partially offset by a reduction in contingent consideration of $3.7 million. Net loss attributable to common shareholders was $33.7 million compared to a net income of $4.6 million during the same period in the prior year, and basic and diluted loss per share were negative $0.23 compared to basic and diluted earnings per share of $0.04 during the same period in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA decreased to $700,000 compared to $36.6 million for the prior year period. Looking at free cash flow, as anticipated, we used cash of $52.5 million in the quarter, primarily due to an increase in unbilled receivables as we had a high concentration of deliveries towards the end of the quarter, which limited our ability to get them billed prior to quarter end; this is not a trend we expect going forward. Overall, we were pleased with the quarter. The changes we instituted in our legacy Array business are continuing to drive improvements in our profitability and our operations team has delivered on progressively higher volumes despite a lot of project timing movement. Our recently acquired STI business did have a few cost challenges this quarter as it went through some growing pains, constructing a project in the U.S., which were compounded by disruption caused by the war in Ukraine. These elevated costs will be a short-term overhang, but they are certainly addressable as we more fully integrate. Now, if we move to Slide 7. When we had our last earnings call, you will remember that it was the week after the announcement of the AD/CVD investigation. At that time, we stated on the call, we did not have sufficient information to evaluate any resulting impact. However, since that time, there has been a lot more work done by the industry to quantify the impact of the investigation. At this point, it is inevitable that it will have an impact on the industry. As SIA recently noted in their April 26 survey, of the respondents, 83% of projects have had their current module supply either get canceled or delayed and 80% of domestic manufacturers are expecting severe or devastating impacts to their business. Unfortunately, as one of the largest domestic providers of utility-scale trackers, we are not immune to this market disruption. So we do anticipate a portion of our business will be impacted. However, that is the bad news. On a more positive side, we conducted a thorough analysis of our current order book. And at this time, we are forecasting between $225 million to $250 million of revenue will be at risk due to module uncertainty. While that number is not trivial, it only represents about 15% of our previous outlook at the midpoint of $1.6 billion. Further, in recent weeks, we have seen the industry rally behind its opposition to this investigation, and we have been front and center of it. Our position is clear. We are fully supportive of a more robust domestic source of modules. However, the supply chain does not exist today. So in the meantime, we seek a practical and stable solution for our industry. Erica Brinker, our Chief Commercial Officer, has spent much of the last few weeks meeting with legislators and administration officials outlining that position along with many others in the industry. While there still is uncertainty as to the ultimate outcome, we are hopeful that these efforts are making a positive impact. Moving to the next slide. In light of the current expected impact, you will see our updated guidance range for 2022. You can see that we are reflecting a reduction of revenue of $200 million at our midpoint, reflecting the AD/CVD risk, which was partially offset by the conversion of new orders. We now expect revenue to be between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion. Looking at adjusted EBITDA, as you might expect, the projects with less module certainty are those that we have signed more recently, and therefore carry higher gross margins, which creates a larger drop-through impact. Further, as discussed earlier, we are also seeing some cost challenges in the STI business that will create a short-term headwind. First, there are elevated labor costs related to the construction of some of their projects, particularly a large U.S.-based project. This project was signed prior to our acquisition and is the first large project in the U.S. where STI is doing the site construction. We have already made changes to the way the company sources its labor on future projects and will evaluate in more detail whether construction is a core competency of the business. Second, the war in Ukraine has created some supply chain disruption in Europe. This has forced STI to bring materials from Asia, leading to higher logistics costs. Going forward, these elevated costs will be reflected in price increases. However, for projects currently under contract, it will create some margin compression. Taking these factors together, we're now expecting adjusted EBITDA to be between $120 million and $140 million for 2022 and adjusted EPS to be between $0.25 and $0.35 with the same share count expectations as before. We also expect the AD/CVD pushouts will have a negative impact on our legacy Array margins in the second quarter as several large higher-margin projects are no longer slated to be delivered. This, coupled with STI challenges, will create some downward margin pressure for the second quarter. That said, we still anticipate sequential revenue growth and sequential margin improvement in both the legacy Array and STI businesses. For the quarter, we are expecting sequential revenue growth between 20% and 25% and adjusted EBITDA margin to be between 6.5% and 7.5%. Lastly, the reduction of our outlook, we obviously considered the impact on liquidity and free cash flow. We still anticipate to produce free cash flow for the year with the expectation still that it will be more back-half weighted. Further, the reduced volume eases some of the peaks and troughs in our working capital, so there is a little bit of smoothing effect. However, the constant shifting of project timing will mean we have to manage our inventory levels very intently. I'll conclude by stating, while there are near-term headwinds, 2022 will still be a good operational year for us. With that, I'll turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Operator

Our first question is from Brian Lee of Goldman Sachs.

Speaker 4

And I appreciate some of the color around the guidance update here. I guess with respect to that, first question I would have would just be around when you're talking to some of your customers and you've identified these projects that are moving out of '22, how much, if any, visibility do you have around if these are moving into '23 first half, second half? Or if these are kind of open-ended, where they may actually slip into even further out years based on project development timelines? And then I think, Nipul, you mentioned some projects in the legacy Array business actually moved out altogether. Could you elaborate on that? I thought that was a Q2 comment, but could you elaborate on that a bit as well?

Yes. Sure, Brian. So regarding the discussion. So as we mentioned on the prepared remarks, we've performed a project-by-project analysis of new bookings. We spoke with customers and independently also evaluated the module certainty. And with that, as of now, the pushouts that we see are moving into 2023. We don't have any further information at this point. And the comments I made about the Q2 margins and the pushouts is, we had some of those projects scheduled in Q2, some got pushed further into the year and some got pushed into 2023.

Speaker 4

Okay, fair enough. That's helpful. And then maybe just two kind of modeling-related questions. If I look at the sort of $200 million or so in revenue that's being pulled out of the guidance for the year at the midpoint, and then I know in the press release, you said that the EBITDA impact is higher because these are richer margin projects, it implies you're getting like a 30% EBITDA margin on the $200 million revenue or so that's being pulled out of the guide. So I guess, one, is that correct? And then two, I guess what are you seeing on the incremental $200 million of bookings in order contracts you cited in the quarter? Is this kind of the level of EBITDA margin you're expecting going forward on new projects just sort of seems like a very high number. Just trying to get a sense of how sustainable that 30% level is just given what's implied by the pushout in revenues here?

Brian, to clarify, the $200 million pushout is at legacy margins, which are in the low 20s. Additionally, our STI business is experiencing higher construction and logistics costs, which we expect to continue for a couple of quarters, affecting 2022. These factors together are causing the midpoint of our EBITDA range to decrease.

Speaker 4

Sorry, let me clarify. I was reviewing what was removed from the guidance. Some of that relates to the increased costs, but it suggests that the additional $200 million in revenue, if achieved, would have resulted in a 30% EBITDA margin. Am I overlooking something? Is there something specific about that volume projection now assumed for 2023 that supports reaching those profitability levels? I'm focused on the difference between EBITDA and revenue, and it suggests a strong margin profile given the volume of projects outlined in the guidance.

No, it's not implying anything more. So I would keep it to thinking that we're at the legacy margins of below 20%, pushing out to 2022 and into 2023. Yes, we did utilize $52 million from our revolver in Q1, but we also have $50 million in cash on our balance sheet, just timing-wise. We are optimistic about our overall cash flow; as noted earlier, we expect to be cash flow positive for the year, with a focus on the second half. Q2 is a quarter where some of the projects we've previously discussed have been postponed, which has slightly improved our cash flow situation. We anticipate being marginally free cash flow positive in Q2, and we are confident that the latter half of the year will allow us to achieve overall free cash flow positivity for the year.

Operator

Our next question is from Mark Strouse of JPMorgan.

Speaker 5

I was hoping you could provide more insight into the demand trends you're observing in Europe, specifically regarding the STI business or the legacy Array business. We are noticing strong import data into the European market year-to-date. Given that utility scale projects require time, I'm curious if this is related to backlog or pipeline, and if you can quantify what you've observed in Europe year-to-date.

Yes. So with both our U.S. and European business, we've seen strength in our bookings. As we say, our overall backlog order book has gone up to $2 billion from what we had at year-end. So we feel strong about that. STI has gone up as well. We've seen that strength both in STI businesses in both Europe and in Brazil. But Europe is strong as kind of what you said as well, Mark.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then, I mean if we think about a surge in demand in Europe in addition to kind of push outs from AD/CVD in the U.S. kind of gearing up for arguably a very strong 2023. Does that require any kind of temporary elevated investment in order to prepare your ability to meet that demand, those shipments in 2023?

The other fortunate aspect is that we have an asset-light model, and our supply chain's goal is to enhance our capacity to accommodate increases in overall demand. We believe we are currently optimizing that capacity in response to the demand expected in 2023.

Speaker 5

Okay. And then just real quick, lastly, this could be a yes or no answer. But kind of getting the sense that the construction costs and everything that you're talking about incremental expenses here do not impact your long-term view of gross margin. So if we should still think about the legacy business being high teens, low 20s gross margins. Is that still accurate?

That is accurate.

Operator

Our next question is from Maheep Mandloi of Crédit Suisse.

Speaker 6

Could you discuss your confidence regarding the U.S. revenues, which are projected to be around $750 million at the midpoint, particularly in relation to module availability from your customers?

Yes. No, we do based on our discussions as well as independent valuations, we feel confident about module availability with the revised guidance that we've provided.

But I will say this is Kevin. I just want to make sure that we're noting that at this point in time, we've had direct conversations with all our large customers. This is their direct feedback to us and commitments that have been made to them for module availability. So dealing with some imperfect information from time to time, we feel pretty confident.

Speaker 6

Right. I assume you have access to the type of modules likely used in those projects. Could you clarify whether those modules are exempt from this investigation, or are they still at risk of being reviewed later this year?

I think to summarize what Kevin mentioned, we had discussions with customers and conducted our independent evaluation. At this point, we believe we have identified the risks that we are aware of. Based on that information, we feel confident in the guidance range we have provided.

Speaker 6

Got it. And then just one last one from me. I think in the past, you kind of talked about shipping trackers as well sometimes ahead of module deliveries, which generally is a rare occurrence, but trying to understand if that's something which could help kind of bring some upside to the guidance later this year.

We do currently have a couple of customers requesting that of us now, and we're evaluating that. Fortunately for us with our design, we have a high degree of flexibility. And for our end customers to potentially switch out similar modules without doing major design changes. But we have customers who are operating in every bit of that continuum now from doing full design changes to switch out and to asking us to construct, and then at a later point in time, supply the clamping systems for their module of choice, which may be influenced. So we're working really hard with our customers, direct communication on a regular basis and all along that continuum.

Speaker 6

Got you. And I appreciate the response.

I guess it should be noted that many of our customers, although the modules may be at risk and pushing out of this year, that doesn't mean they're giving up. They're still trying to find alternative supply and trying to pull and keep things into their original program dates as well. So we're certainly here and willing to support them in all of those.

Operator

Our next question is from Philip Shen of ROTH Capital.

Speaker 7

I had a follow-up on Maheep's question there on the '22 revenue guide. I was wondering if you might be able to share what percentage of that $1 billion is 1, domestic; and 2, international? And then also, importantly, of the domestic revenue, what percentage of that do you think is supported by First Solar, Maxeon projects as well as safe harbor. Just trying to get a feel for the level of confidence you have in that $1 billion with First Solar, Maxeon and Safe Harbor hybrid modules and it seems like you guys are probably in a very good position there.

Yes Phil. So first, to answer the first part of your question on that $1 billion, that represents the legacy Array portion; it's about a 90-10 split as far as domestic international. As far as the split, we haven't provided the split of kind of that in $1 billion or that $900 million of the particular modules. But again, we'll go back to the discussions we have, but also the independent evaluation we did of what module certainty there was. We feel good about that at this point, where we feel confident enough to put the $1 billion out there as far as the midpoint.

Speaker 7

Great. And then coming back to the revolver. You mentioned, Nipul, that you guys pulled down $52 million in the quarter. Can you talk through how much more you can pull down without tripping any of the covenants?

Yes, sure. So we have a covenant that we have to be 7.1x leverage or less. And so with the short-term kind of trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA that we've had, we have to clear, let's stay under $70 million for the very short term, probably in Q2. But we feel good about our cash flow here in Q2 and the options that we have. Scenario planning we've done to get past the short term. And then after Q2, we see it opening up in the full revolver capacity being available for us.

Speaker 7

Okay, great. One more here. Regarding STI, can you help us understand the increased construction costs? I thought you were selling widgets and tracker products. Does STI also engage in EPC projects? Can you provide a bit more detail on that? Sorry if I missed it.

Yes. While it's not their main business, they have taken on construction projects for some large customers. A significant factor that contributed to the margin being lower than we anticipated for Q1 was a project in the U.S. we've been involved in. They also have another U.S. project where they've committed to construction, and we are assisting them with labor selection for that project. It's not a core skill for them, but they are engaged in a couple of projects.

Operator

Our next question is from Colin Rusch of Oppenheimer.

Speaker 8

I want to dig into the liquidity question a little bit deeper. Can you give us a sense of how much liquidity you have right now? And how much you have been able to collect out of that working capital quarter-to-date?

Yes, sure. So liquidity, we have the revolver up to another $20 million on the revolver plus the cash we have on the balance sheet, as mentioned previously. We also have, if needed, we have $100 million of preferred shares that we can pull. And then, of course, as you saw, you'll see as our receivables, we have $400 million of receivables at 331 and about $200 million of payables. So that just cash sources and uses, we expect those receivables to be collected here in Q2. So we feel that, that provides us enough liquidity along with the remaining revolver as well as if needed potentially preferred shares.

Speaker 8

Okay, that's helpful. And then, can you give us an update on any sort of efforts that you have around engineering and cost out of the solutions and cost reduction efforts and qualification of those redesign?

Yes, we are actively focused on value engineering our products and reducing costs. While we don't have specific details to share at this time, we are collaborating with our customers to minimize the installation costs of their products, as this represents a significant expense in constructing solar farms. We will continue to assist our customers in lowering costs associated with installing trackers and foundations. These are the main areas we are concentrating on from an engineering innovation perspective.

Operator

Next question is from Kashy Harrison of Piper Sandler.

Speaker 9

Kevin, congrats on the new role. You made a comment in your prepared remarks about sharing risks with your customers. Could you please elaborate further on what you were referring to specifically?

Yes. So this is really about maintaining a level of flexibility for customers. And what I was referencing there in particular was things such as the warranty on clients and class design that may be changing from the original design spec to where they find themselves needing a different plan and spec with different modules choice, right? So we have customers coming to us saying, look, could you be a little bit more flexible, extend warranty on that change of design and we'll either pay an additional money for an extended warranty or things like that. So just asking us for a little bit more flexible solutions to get through this time period, and we're certainly willing to do that. Only after we've done the engineering work internally to make sure that, that makes sense for us to do. So it's really about, again, staying in close contact with these large customers of ours and having a degree of flexibility in working with them.

Speaker 9

That's helpful.

Yes, that also applies in the other direction. As we experience some of these large programs being delayed, it's important that our suppliers and vendors are flexible in postponing shipments and managing their inventory to assist us in better managing our working capital. We are seeking this flexibility in both directions, and we are adapting in a flexible manner, as are our customers, and so far, our vendors are cooperating as well.

Speaker 9

That's helpful context and actually dovetails quite nicely to my next question, which is around working capital. I think both you and Nipul mentioned, it's going to be a focus here moving forward. Just looking at the days sales outstanding in like 2019, 2020 relative to where it is today, it seems like days sales outstanding has increased quite a lot over that time period. I'm wondering if something has changed in the way you collect cash from your customers today relative to 2020, and if you have the ability to return to those historical levels across the board, not just receivables, but payables and inventory days, et cetera.

Yes. In the short term, we can say yes. However, we believe we can return to our previous cash and debt levels. Currently, due to the supply chain situation, we have increased inventory for certain aspects in the fourth quarter and into the first quarter. This is to address rising inventory costs due to inflation and to buffer against any supply chain issues by increasing safety stock, ensuring timely delivery and avoiding delays in project builds. Regarding days sales outstanding, part of the increase is related to our delivery schedule affecting unbilled items—products that have been shipped and delivered but haven't yet entered the billing cycle. This unbilled amount has risen, but as we catch up with shipments toward the end of the first quarter, we expect this to decrease in the second quarter and throughout the rest of the year, helping us return to our historical levels of days sales outstanding and days inventory outstanding as we reduce inventory.

Speaker 9

That's very helpful. If I could ask one more question about the legacy Array guidance, the $1 billion compares to last year's $850 million. Last year, 97% of that was from the U.S.; this year, it's 90%. So if we account for higher average selling prices, would the volumes in the U.S. remain relatively flat year-over-year? Or would they decrease year-over-year for your legacy Array U.S. business?

Yes. When you look at that, we actually see that the volumes are slightly up in the U.S. business ex any increase due to pricing. So we've actually seen being it up with the $1 billion.

Operator

Our last question is from Donovan Schafer of Northland Capital Markets.

Speaker 10

I want to follow up on the self-performance or EPC work happening in North America. I believe you mentioned there's one other project. Could you provide a rough sense of its size? Are we talking about something larger than 100 megawatts? If there are additional projects beyond that, could you also share information about those locations? Is this performance specific to the U.S. due to a competitive labor market where they felt the need to demonstrate their capabilities, or is there similar activity happening in Brazil and Europe?

Yes, Donovan, it's Nipul. The project is over 100 megawatts here in the U.S., and that's the second project. There are no other projects scheduled for the U.S. We have significantly assisted with that one by ensuring the labor matches the product cost. They've got projects in Brazil and Spain as well, where they handle some of the sales and installations themselves, but that's not the majority of their projects. We're currently evaluating that.

Speaker 10

Can you provide details about the depreciation expense related to the STI and Norland acquisition? What is the basis for that expense? Does it pertain to capital equipment production, tracker components, or is it related to the previous practice of amortizing research and development costs that you are no longer following? Is this depreciation a reflection of ongoing capital expenditures or will it fade away over time? What factors are driving this depreciation?

Yes, Donovan, what you see there and what we mentioned in the prepared remarks is not depreciation; it's amortization related to the acquisition, primarily concerning backlog and customer lists. That's what predominantly makes up the $16.7 million.

Speaker 10

My apologies. I have one last question for my own sake. Looking back at the Q2 and Q3 presentations from 2021, you provided some helpful information about gross margins and how they would be reversing. There was also an accounting change that caused the delay in Q4, which impacted gross margins. I'm curious if you could share roughly what the gross margin would have been for the first quarter under the old methodology. Would it have been an increase of about 1% or 2%? I'm trying to recall that and compare it with what you're saying now. I understand things have changed, and the environment is different, but can you give me any indication of that?

Donovan, we didn't expect the margins to shift in 2022 due to that accounting change. The margin for the legacy Array business is at 8.5%, and we are confident about that as it reflects sequential growth. We also believe that in Q2 we will maintain that sequential margin growth. We are optimistic about the recovery trajectory of the Array business based on the processes we have implemented. Yes.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. This concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.