SunPower view solid despite tax credit

By Matt Daily

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Solar power company SunPower Corp SPWR.O will meet its financial forecasts this year and in 2009, even if the U.S. government fails to renew tax incentives that expire at the end of the year, Chief Executive Officer Tom Werner said on Tuesday.

The U.S. Congress has yet to pass an extension of the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for solar installations or similar incentives that reduce the costs of wind, biomass and other renewables that would be acceptable to the White House.

"We control our own destiny, (and) we'll be able to enter other new markets rapidly, and we believe we can hold our guidance for '08 and '09, even if the ITC doesn't pass, by moving business elsewhere," Werner told the Reuters Global Energy Summit.

Failure to expand U.S. tax credits would not likely hurt SunPower's residential sales, he said, which make up about 50 percent of its industry-leading North American business, but will squeeze sales to the business market.

"In the commercial business, it will impact our business," he said. "I think we're in the time frame of where it will impact in the back half of the year and early next year."

Still, the company expects solar markets to expand in countries such as Italy, Greece, France and Australia, which could absorb any drop in demand in the United States.

"It's not to suggest it would be easy, it's to suggest that we're prepared to do that," he said.

Werner also said the company's solar panel systems -- which he described as the most efficient in the industry -- would reach "grid parity," in which they are as economically efficient as more traditional forms of power generation, within the next five years.