Despite major growth, SolarCity shares drop on quarter loss

In SolarCity’s first earnings statement since it held its IPO in December 2012, the company showed major growth in 2012, but posted a larger loss than expected for the fourth quarter of 2012, causing its stock to drop sharply in after hours trading. SolarCity’s shares dropped as much as 10 percent in after hour trading.

SolarCity said for the fourth quarter of 2012, it had a net loss attributed to shareholders of $ 3.04 million, while it had a positive net income attributed to shareholders of $ 14.07 million for the same period a year earlier. Per share, that was a loss excluding items of $ 1.10 for the fourth quarter of 2012, compared to a positive gain in net income of $ 0.24 for the same period a year earlier. Revenue for the quarter was up slightly at $ 25.27 million.

For the full year 2012, total revenues were $ 128.66 million, which was double the revenues in 2011 of $ 59.55 million. SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive said the company is signing up a new customer every five minutes. There were 157 MW deployed in 2012, which was an increase of 118 percent over 2011.

SolarCity now has over 50,000 customers and has deployed close to 300 MW worth of solar panel projects over its lifetime. They also have close to 200 MW of backlog orders to deploy. Rive said on the earnings call on Wednesday that for 2012 “we could not have asked for a better year.”

Unfortunately now that the company is public, its a quarterly numbers game to Wall Street and analysts.