SunPower Corp. (Nasdaq: SPWR) has high hopes for Hillsboro SolarWorld factory – Portland Business Journal

In SunPower Corp.’s first earnings call since announcing a deal to acquire SolarWorld Americas Inc. , analysts trying to figure out the effect of the transaction on shareholder value weren’t able to wring a purchase price out of executives. […]

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But they did get hints, in addition to more information about how the San Jose-based company thinks the Hillsboro plant can help its bottom line.

“For various reasons, I cannot give the specifics of the purchase price, but we do not consider the cash consideration material to our financials,” Chairman and CEO Tom Werner said Tuesday.

Later in the call, Executive Vice President and CFO Chuck Boynton reiterated that, but did talk about the upside potential of the deal.

“What I would tell you is the bull case is extremely accretive,” Boynton said. “And again, that will unfold over the next couple of years.”

Boynton went on to say: “We think the technical synergies are quite high. We know how to run factories at a world-class level, and we can improve operations and improve reliability and quality. And so there’s a very great bull case, and we don’t put the downside cases very high. And so I would say neutral from a planning standpoint, but we think that we can do better and really drive good profits and make it significantly accretive over time.”

SunPower executives said again that they were motivated to make the deal by the Trump administration’s solar tariffs — sought by SolarWorld after its parent company SolarWorld AG went bankrupt last year.

Werner was asked by an analyst: “Simple question, would you do the SolarWorld deal if there were no Section 201 tariff?”

His one-word answer: “Unlikely.”

SunPower has said that it expects the deal to close after regulatory review by the end of June.