Solaredge Technologies Inc

NASDAQ:SEDG

Earnings Call Analysis

Adjusting Operations Amidst Revenue Decline

In response to decreased demand, manufacturing has ceased in Mexico, while capacity in China has been reduced; concurrently, U.S. production is increasing with an aim to ship 12,000 energy hub inverters in Q4 and reach a rate of 50,000 units per quarter. The company is also discontinuing non-core e-Mobility activity. New product expansion includes a 330 kilowatt inverter targeting community solar, with production ramping up for global deliveries in 2024. A share repurchase program, signaling confidence in growth, was approved. Meanwhile, total revenues have fallen by 27% quarter-over-quarter to $725.3 million, with a significant 29% decrease in solar segment revenues to $676.4 million.

Facing Headwinds and Ramping Up for Recovery

As the investment world turns its eyes on SolarEdge's recent performance, the insights from their third-quarter earnings call in 2023 reveal a company navigating through choppy waters. The period ended with $725 million in revenues, a 27% quarterly decrease, and 13% lower year-over-year, signaling a slowdown in its solar business by 29% quarter-over-quarter and 14% year-over-year. Europe, particularly, presented unexpected challenges with cancellations and reduced demand leading to significant revenue drops, including a 43% decline in Germany and a 40% decline in the Netherlands.

Adjusting Strategies Amid Market Dynamics

The company's resilient response to market shifts is evident as it adjusts operations to align with demand. SolarEdge ceased manufacturing in Mexico, downsized in China, and is boosting output in the U.S. with an expectation to ship 12,000 energy hub inverters in Q4. Moreover, anticipating a recovery, they forecast a normalized revenue run rate of $600 million to $700 million per quarter once inventory levels stabilize, which may take up to three quarters of gradual improvement.

Operational Optimizations and Financial Prudence

Cost adjustments are key alongside strategic growth measures. SolarEdge plans to initiate production in a new site by Q2 2024 and has ceased its non-core e-Mobility activity to streamline focus. Additionally, portraying financial prudence coupled with confidence in future growth, they've authorized a stock repurchase program of up to $300 million through 2024.

Market Expansion Despite Global Instability

Even with a minor workforce disruption in Israel due to reserve call-ups affecting 6% of their global staff, there have been no business interruptions. SolarEdge anticipates underlying demand to exceed their projected Q4 revenue, reflecting their strong market position and a strategy aimed at outpacing the solar market's growth through innovation and new segment penetration.

Taking Stock of Revenue and Margins

Despite a tough quarter with revenue and margin declines, SolarEdge is harnessing market insights for future successes. Battery sales in the U.S. remain stable, with European numbers slipping. The average selling price per watt dipped to $0.164, largely due to product mix shifts and a weaker euro, yet the company maintained stable pricing overall. Non-solar revenues saw an increase to $48.7 million, yet a sharp decline in GAAP gross margins to 19.7% from 32% indicates the pressures faced by SolarEdge in this quarter.

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q3

[Operator]

Welcome to the SolarEdge Conference Call for the Third Quarter ended September 30, 2023. This call is being webcast live on the company's website at www.solaredge.com in the Investors section on the Event Calendar page. This call is the sole property and copyright of SolarEdge with all rights reserved, and any recording, reproduction or transmission of this call without the expressed written consent of SolarEdge is prohibited. You may listen to a webcast replay of this call by visiting the Event Calendar page of the SolarEdge Investor website.

I would now like to turn the call over to J.B. Lowe, Head of Investor Relations for SolarEdge.

[J.B. Lowe, executive]

Thank you, Leo, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us to discuss SolarEdge's operating results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2023, as well as the company's outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023. With me today are Zvi Lando, Chief Executive Officer; and Ronen Faier, Chief Financial Officer. Zvi will begin with a brief review of the results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2023. Ronen will then review the financial results for the third quarter, followed by the company's outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023. We will then open the call for questions.

Please note that this call will include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management's current expectations. We encourage you to review the safe harbor statements contained in our press release the slides published today and our filings with the SEC for a more complete description of such risks and uncertainties. All material contained in the webcast is the sole property and copyright of SolarEdge Technologies, with all rights reserved. Please note, this presentation describes certain non-GAAP measures, including non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP net diluted earnings per share, which are not measures prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP.

The non-GAAP measures are presented in this presentation because we believe that they provide investors with the means of evaluating and understanding how the company's management evaluates the company's operating performance. These non-GAAP measures should not be considered in isolation from, as substitutes for or superior to financial measures prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Listeners who do not have a copy of the quarter ended September 30, 2023, press release or the supplemental material may obtain a copy by visiting the Investor Relations section of the company's website.

Now I will turn the call over to Zvi.

[Zvi Lando, executive]

Thank you, J.B. Good afternoon, and thank you all for joining us on our conference call today. As reflected in our preliminary announcement a few weeks ago, and in the guidance we are giving today. We are going through challenging times in terms of general market dynamics and specific inventory trends related to our products. In the call today, we will share details of third quarter sales and megawatt sell-through data aggregated from distributors in some of the regions and our latest estimates of underlying business levels in the near future and estimate how long it will take to reach the associated revenue level.

Before getting into the regional picture, I want to start with high-level perspective. During 2022, and in particular, the second half of 2022, our industry went through an unprecedented surge in demand, which we attributed to geopolitical and other reasons discussed in our prior calls. Indicators in the beginning of 2023, where that demand would continue to increase this year, in particular in Europe. This led to a buildup of significant backlog for our products, in particular, because at the time, we faced operational challenges to supply over demand. Specifically, this was related to 3-phase commercial inverters that were in high demand and low supply in the late part of 2022 and our supply improved dramatically in early 2023. Additionally, in early 2023, we released in Europe a differentiated 3-phase residential offering of a backup invertor and battery, which our customers were waiting for and excited to adopt.

As a result of these factors, our shipments in the first half of 2023 were at record levels and we were in the process of increasing capacity to meet the elevated channel demand. However, market demand began to slow in the third quarter and distributors began to experience financial challenges. As a result, we received a large amount of requests to cancel or push out orders. We should note that while these orders are technically binding on our distributors, the nature of our relationship with these customers is such that we accommodated most of these requests. As a result, our third quarter revenue and fourth quarter expected revenues are significantly lower than our run rate in recent quarters, while the infrastructure we built to support the anticipated sales growth has created a burden that is putting pressure on our margins in the near term.

I will describe when and how we believe our revenue will reach a level that reflects stabilized market demand post inventory corrections, and Ronen will elaborate on the margin and financial infrastructure impact of the short-term actions we are taking. Now let's go over the highlights of our third quarter results. We concluded the quarter with revenues of approximately $725 million. Revenues from our solar business were $676 million, while revenues from our nonsolar businesses were $49 million. This quarter, we shipped 3.3 million power optimizers and 274,000 inverters. Additionally, this quarter, we shipped 121-megawatt hours of residential batteries, down from 269-megawatt hours last quarter. Our solar business revenues declined quarter-over-quarter by 29% and by 14% year-over-year, driven by market slowdown and high inventory of our products in the channels.

Moving now to market-by-market dynamics. Starting in Europe. As already described, during the second part of the third quarter, we experienced significant unexpected cancellations and pushouts of existing backlog from our European distributors. Although the dynamics are consistent with what we cautioned during our second quarter earnings call, the magnitude grew much greater than we anticipated. We also note that the European market is a diverse one, and each country comes with its own regulatory environment and energy-related dynamics. I will give some color on what we see on a per-country basis in some of the top countries in which we operate.

According to market reports, Germany, which is the largest rooftop solar market in Europe, is on track this year to connect to the grid more than 10 gigawatts of solar compared to 7.5 gigawatts in 2022. The government has announced a long-term goal to reach 215 gigawatts by 2030, which in order to be achieved, would require annual installation of approximately 20 gigawatts per year. indicating the expected long-term strength of the German market. Consistent with this trend, our residential energy hub 3-phase inverter introduced in April of this year, and our 3-phase battery are optimized for the German market. We continue to see good adoption of this solution.

From a demand perspective, our sell-through in Germany in the third quarter was up 44% year-over-year and down 37% quarter-over-quarter from the peak levels typically seen in the second quarter. The Swiss and Austrian market which revenue-wise are about 1/3 of the size of our revenue in Germany, utilize the same portfolio of products as Germany, and similarly grew significantly so far in 2023 and are expected to continue to grow in 2024. In fact, Switzerland was a record revenue quarter for us in Q3 and we are well positioned to continue growth in these markets in 2024. Down through in these markets was up 213% year-over-year and up 42% quarter-over-quarter.

Moving to the Netherlands. The market in the Netherlands is dramatically down from peak levels due to uncertainty around government policies and the phaseout of net metering which may become clearer after the elections in November. That said, there are several trends that we believe will work in our favor in the mid- and long term in this market. The increased implementation of dynamic tariffs combined with the phaseout of net metering is likely to increase the number of full system installations with batteries, EV charging and advanced home energy management capabilities similar to the SolarEdge ONE platform that we launched at Intersolar in June.

Additionally, depending on changes in regulation, the Netherlands could have a large potential for upsell and retrofit of existing installations with additional products, including batteries and EV chargers as well as software capabilities, which is a great opportunity for SolarEdge given our market leadership and best installed base in this country. Furthermore, there has been a push for new residential homes to be built with 3-phase service in what has traditionally been a single-phase market. This one enabled the use of our differentiated 3-phase offering that we have been successful with in Germany as described earlier. These 3 of our products in the combined Belgium and Netherlands market were up 4% year-over-year and down 25% quarter-over-quarter.

In Italy, the residential market has been sluggish since the super bonus tax credit ended earlier this year. And we saw our point of sale of residential products in this market declined year-over-year by 48%. On the other hand, the commercial market has seen significant growth and has largely offset the decline in the residential market. Our point-of-sale data for commercial products in Italy was up 216% year-over-year in the third quarter. Overall, our megawatt sell-through in Italy was up 85% year-over-year and down 6% quarter-over-quarter. All in all, the underlying demand in the European market were strong in the 9-month period ended September 30. Although below the much elevated expectation heading into the year, leading to the inventory buildup that I described earlier. On an aggregated basis, in Europe, our sell-through in the third quarter was up 34% year-over-year and down 22% quarter-over-quarter.

Moving to the U.S. we have not seen a significant change in market dynamics since our second quarter call. The market is still being adversely impacted by high interest rates and uncertainties around the pace of adoption of NIM 3.0 systems in California. In commercial, we are seeing a slight improvement as projects that were on hold appear to be moving forward, possibly related to availability of low-priced modules. In our data, sell-through in the third quarter for residential was down 13% quarter-over-quarter and commercial was up 8% quarter-over-quarter. Battery sell-through was up 31% quarter-over-quarter. We expect these market dynamics to continue without significant change in the coming quarters.

In the rest of the world, our third quarter revenues were relatively stable, and we do not see dramatic shifts in overall revenue over the next several quarters. The rest of world markets are largely dominated by commercial installations, which are impacted by the higher interest rate environment. Local dynamics in specific countries are largely offsetting each other. Taking into account these market dynamics, we use the demand patterns represented by the sell-through data discussed above to model the time we think it will take to run down the inventory level and have estimated a normalized level of revenue and margin following the inventory corrections. We used our sell-through data for the third quarter of 2023 as a baseline and did not include potential additional revenue from new products that we will discuss separately for market share improvements that we are working on and for which we see positive signs. This modeling currently indicates in a noninventory challenge environment, a revenue run rate of approximately $600 million to $700 million per quarter. Using this model and looking at inventory data that we received from our distributors, we estimate the correction could take 2 to 3 quarters of gradual improvement quarter-over-quarter.

Moving to the operational side. We are, of course, already taking measures to adjust our cost base to this projected level of business. To align with reduced demand, we have discontinued manufacturing of our products in Mexico and reduced capacity in China. In parallel, we are ramping up manufacturing in our U.S. facility, where we expect to ship 12,000 Energy Hub inverters in the fourth quarter, ramping to a run rate of 50,000 units per quarter. Additionally, we are targeting for a second [indiscernible] to begin producing commercial inverters and optimizers by the second quarter of 2024.

An additional step of cost reduction is our decision to discontinue our light commercial vehicle e-mobility activity, which we consider as non-core. And as such, we delivered final kits to Stellantis in October. We intend to continue making adjustments to achieve the levels of profitability at the revenue run rate discussed earlier, which Ronen will elaborate on in his comments.

Moving on to products. We recently installed our first 330-kilowatt inverter in the U.S. following similar installations that have been running for some time in Europe and Asia. This product is specifically targeting community solar and agri TV applications. We will be ramping production in the fourth quarter for further deliveries globally in 2024. This will expand our offering for these ground mount applications beyond the tracker product that we released a few months ago. This quarter, we are also announcing the approval by our Board of Directors of a share repurchase program which reflects our confidence in the future growth of our company. The plan authorizes the repurchase of up to $300 million of the company's stock through 2024.

I would like now to address the ongoing situation in Israel and how it is affecting our company. We have seen no disruption to our ability to manufacture and deliver products and services to our customers. Approximately 11% of our Israel-based workforce, which is approximately 6% of our global workforce has been called up for reserve duty, and we are prioritizing and reallocating resources between projects to make sure that the impact to our business is minimum. To conclude my remarks, setting aside recent and upcoming inventory corrections, we believe the underlying demand for our products, while at a reduced level from the first half of 2023 is above our projected fourth quarter revenue and represents our strong position in the market.

On top of this, our global sales force is energized and focused on gaining market share based on the products and improvements made to our core portfolio in the last 12 to 18 months. This, together with the new products we have developed for the new segments we have entered should create an opportunity for incremental growth at a faster rate than the solar market in the coming year.

I will now hand it over to Ronen.

[Ronen Faier, executive]

Thank you, Zvi, and good afternoon, everyone. This financial review includes a GAAP and non-GAAP discussion. Full reconciliation of the pro forma to GAAP results discussed on this call is available on our website and in the press release issued today. Segment profit is comprised of gross profit for the segment, less operating expenses that do not include amortization of purchased intangible assets impairments of goodwill and intangible assets, stock-based compensation expenses and certain other items.

Total revenues for the third quarter were $725.3 million a 27% decrease compared to $991.3 million in the last quarter and a 13% decrease compared to $836.7 million for the same quarter last year. Revenues from our solar segment, which include the sales of residential batteries and trackers were $676.4 million, a 29% decrease compared to $947.4 million last quarter and a 14% [Audio Gap] decrease from the same quarter last year, representing approximately 29% of our solar revenues. Solar revenues from Europe were $419.2 million a 39% decrease from the last quarter and 12% increase from the same quarter last year, representing 62% of our solar revenues.

In Europe, we saw a meaningful quarter-over-quarter revenue drop across the board with noticeable declines in Germany [Audio Gap] grew this quarter by 11%, reaching a record high. And in France, revenues grew by 30% [Audio Gap] lower demand than anticipated by our customers led to an accumulation of large quantities in the channels. Rest of World solar revenues were [Audio Gap] in Europe are attributed to lower sales of batteries where a combination of inventories in the beginning of the quarter and lower demand than [indiscernible] our customers [indiscernible] large quantities in the channels. Rest of World solar revenues were $61.5 million, a 3% decrease compared to the last quarter and flat compared to the third quarter of last year, representing approximately 9% of our solar revenues.

On a megawatt basis, we shipped 774 megawatts of inverters to the United States, 2.6 gigawatts to Europe and 467 megawatts to the rest of the world, totaling 3.8 gigawatts of quarterly inverter shipments. During the quarter, we continued to ship a higher ratio of inverters related to optimizers in order to catch up with previous Optimizer sales.

During the quarter, 66% of our megawatt shipments were commercial products and the remaining 34% were residential. Since the beginning of the year, we have shipped approximately 7.1 gigawatts of commercial products worldwide compared to the 5.2 gigawatt ship in all of 2022. In the third quarter, we shipped 121-megawatt hour of our residential batteries, a decrease from 269-megawatt hour last quarter. While our battery sales in Europe decreased significantly, battery sales in the United States remained relatively stable, and we continue to see a steady increase in installation rates in the United States. Average selling per watt this quarter excluding battery revenues was $0.164, a 13% decrease from $0.188 last quarter. This ASP per watt decrease is predominantly a result of a lower optimizer shipment mix during the quarter, an increase in the weight of commercial inverters in our overall mix and the weaker euro. In general, our prices did not change this quarter.

Our battery ASP per kilowatt hour was $475, slightly down from $479 last quarter, mostly a result of a weaker euro. Revenues this quarter from our nonsolar segment were $48.7 million, an increase from $43.7 million last quarter. Consolidated GAAP gross margins for the quarter was 19.7%, down from 32% in the prior quarter and down from 26.5% in the same quarter last year. Non-GAAP gross margin this quarter was 20.8% compared to 32.7% in the prior quarter and 37.3% for the same quarter last year. Gross margin for the solar segment was 24% compared to 34.7% in the prior quarter and 28.3% in the same quarter last year.

I would like now to address the decrease in our gross margins in the third quarter and provide color on the fourth quarter and the quarters ahead. Our cost of goods sold are comprised of variable costs that are correlated to the product mix and volume shift, such as manufacturing costs, shipping and logistics expenses, et cetera. In addition, we have other indirect costs that are not volume or mix specific, such as warranty costs related to our existing and growing installed base, contract manufactured claims related to adjustments made to the manufacturing levels and costs associated with our operation and support department, et cetera. These costs are not correlated to the volumes of product shipped and usually require some time to be adjusted to significant changes in revenues.

Of the total quarter-over-quarter reduction of 1,070 basis points in the solar segment margin, approximately 160 basis points are attributed to higher portion of commercial products and lower portion of optimizers within our product mix, customer mix and the devaluation of the euro against the U.S. dollar. The remaining 910 basis points decline are mostly related to the allocation of our indirect costs over a lower revenue base. Around 1/3 of the 910 basis points are related to warranty and service costs across our existing and growing installed base that do not change when revenues decline. Approximately 200 basis points are related to the allocation of our operations, quality and support organizations over lower revenues. The remaining amount is a result of a higher percentage of logistic costs due to increased storage expenses and underutilization costs to contract manufacturers.

In the third quarter, we have also recorded a onetime expense related to the discontinuation of manufacturing in Mexico. These economies of scale will persist and even worsen in the fourth quarter as revenues are abnormally low. Noteworthy is that these indirect costs were down quarter-over-quarter on an absolute basis. And due to the actions in process we expect them to be significantly lower again in the fourth quarter in absolute value. We expect margins to gradually improve in the first and second quarter of the next year as we will continue to reduce cost and as our revenues return to a more normalized level. Gross margin for our nonsolar segment was minus 22.8% compared to minus 9.6% in the previous quarter.

On a non-GAAP basis, operating expenses for the second quarter were $128 million or 17.6% of revenues compared to $133.3 million or 13.4% of revenues in the prior quarter and $108.3 million or 12.9% of revenues for the same quarter last year. Non-GAAP operating income for the quarter was $23.1 million compared to $191 million in the previous quarter and $120.2 million for the same period last year. The Solar segment generated operating income of $45.7 million this quarter, down from $207 million in the last quarter. The non-solar segment generated an operating loss of $22.6 million compared to an operating loss of $16.1 million in the previous quarter. Non-GAAP financial loss for the quarter was $7.4 million compared to a non-GAAP financial income of $4.4 million in the previous quarter. The loss was largely a result of a weaker euro during the quarter.

Our non-GAAP tax expense was $46.6 million compared to $38 million in the previous quarter and $34.5 million for the same period last year. The unusual result is mostly due to the amortization of R&D expenses for tax purposes as well as temporarily higher tax rate related to the quarterly tax calculation methodology. We expect our annual non-GAAP tax rate for the entire 2023 to be within 22% to 24%. GAAP net loss for the third quarter was $61.2 million compared to a GAAP net income of $119.5 million in the previous quarter and GAAP net income of $24.7 million in the same quarter last year. Our non-GAAP net loss was $31 million compared to a non-GAAP net income of $157.4 million in the previous quarter and a non-GAAP net income of $54.1 million in the same quarter last year.

GAAP net diluted loss per share was $1.08 for the third quarter compared to a GAAP net diluted earnings per share of $2.03 in the previous quarter and a GAAP net diluted earnings per share of $0.43 for the same quarter last year. Non-GAAP net diluted loss per share was $0.55 compared to a non-GAAP net diluted earnings per share of $2.62 in the previous quarter and non-GAAP net diluted earnings per share of $0.91 in the same quarter last year. As mentioned by Zvi, we expect that the stabilized solar revenue levels after the inventory correction has run its course, will be approximately $600 million to $700 million quarterly. Under this scenario, corporate non-GAAP gross margins are targeted to be 30% to 32%, including approximately 500 basis points of benefits from IRA manufacturing tax credit and operating profit margins are targeted to be at 11% to 14% and after implementing cost reduction activities. I reiterate that this scenario is based on no improvement in demand from our third quarter sell-through levels and assumes no incremental revenues or margin from new products.

Turning now to the balance sheet. As of September 30, 2023, cash, cash equivalents, bank deposits, restricted deposits and investments were $1.5 billion. Net of debt, this amount is $831.4 million. This quarter, cash generated from operations was $40.6 million as a reduction in our receivables account and raw materials inventories were partially offset by an increase in finished goods inventories. As we had anticipated, we swung back to cash flow from operations generation in the third quarter, and we expect to see greater cash flow from operations in the fourth quarter. Accounts receivable net decreased this quarter to $940 million compared to $1.15 billion last quarter, representing 149 days outstanding. This increase in customers' days sales outstanding resulted from extended payment terms provided to our customers, especially in Europe in order to assist them handling with higher inventory levels than desired, as previously described. As of September 30, our inventory level net of reserve was at $1.2 billion compared to $984.2 million in the last quarter. The increase is solely attributed to higher finished goods inventories, a result of the abrupt slowdown in shipments, offset by a decrease in raw material inventory.

Turning to our guidance for the fourth quarter of 2023. We're guiding revenues to be within a range of $300 million to $350 million. We expect non-GAAP gross margin to be within a range of 5% to 8%, including approximately 130 basis points of net IRA manufacturing tax credit. We expect our non-GAAP operating expenses to be within the range of $126 million to $130 million. Revenues from the solar segment are expected to be within the range of $275 million to $320 million. Gross margin from our solar segment is expected to be within the range of 7% to 10%, including approximately 130 basis points of net IRA manufacturing tax credit.

I will now turn the call over to the operator to open it up for questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]. We'll take our first question from Philip Shen of ROTH MKM.

[Philip Shen, analyst]

I wanted to explore the correction cadence some more. As it relates to Q4, you have this $300 million to $350 million revenue range, and you talked about how things could grow gradually in the coming 2 to 3 quarters or the subsequent 2 to 3 quarters. So could you -- can you quantify in any way, Q1, 2 and even 3 is kind of revenue number with either a 3 or 4 in front of it more reasonable. And then when we get back to Q4, once you're post correction, do you jump right away to that $600 million to $700 million. And then as it relates to margins, could you do the same kind of sketch for that as well? You talked about things gradually improving, but the margin challenge this quarter was for the guide here in Q4, very much has to do with mix. Would you expect your mix to be very similar for Q1 through 3 of next year as well?

[Ronen Faier, executive]

Okay, Phil. First of all, I thank you for the question, and I hope that I'll capture everything, if not, please correct me. So I will start by saying that forecasting the cadence of changes, in particular, complicated right now because of the fact that the changes that we've seen were relatively fast. But in a way that we are analyzing the markets and we analyze them based on U.S., Europe and rest of the world, we're basically looking at the overall shipments that we did compared to the rate of sell-through data, as Zvi mentioned in his prepared remarks. And when we look at them, we basically see that right now, the numbers that we see are representing approximately 50% of our normalized level.

Now when it comes to the correction, there is a little bit of difference, I would say, between the U.S. and Europe. First of all, starting from Europe, we usually see that Q4 is a down quarter compared to Q3, and then Q1 is not necessarily up compared to Q4 because of seasonality. And here, winter plays a very important role. The way that we see it is that we should see a higher growth in -- or revenues in Q1 in Europe already because, first of all, we do understand that in the composition of the inventory within the distribution channels, we have both commercial and residential products. They are not evenly distributed. And therefore, we believe that some of the products, even though maybe on, let's say, single phase, you see a little bit of a higher revenue -- sorry, a higher inventory than commercial, they will run out of commercial and will need to grow a little bit faster. We see, for example, that in the last quarters, we shipped a little bit more inverters than optimizers. We believe that right now, optimizers level may be a little bit lower than it should be at the end Q1 and therefore, we do expect to see a relatively linear growth in Europe going from this quarter into the, let's say, second and third quarter, again, with heavy reliance on how winter looks like. If it is going to be a light winter, where you see a lot of installations, as you saw last year, you will see a little bit of a steeper growth from Q4 to Q1 and then a little bit of a slower growth to Q2 and then back to Q3. If it's going to be a hard winter, then you will see a little bit of a flatter line compared to Q4, but then a bigger increase.

When it comes to the U.S., in the U.S., we actually do not expect a lot of changes in the overall situation of our revenues because, as we've mentioned since the beginning of the year, this is a market where it's relatively predictable or the slowdown was relatively predictable. The channels are behaving in a more linear manner. You don't see so much seasonality as you can see. And therefore, we expect to see, I would say, relatively similar revenues, let's say, from this quarter to the following quarters, maybe with a little bit of a slowdown in Q4 because of the end of the year. And rest of the world is expected to be, I would say, relatively similar with small linear growth.

So now I'll try to summarize how things would look like. Because if we see that U.S. and rest of the world should be I would say, relatively similar to where they are today, with, again, a little bit of a drop at the beginning in Q4, we do expect to see, I would say, pretty linear growth from Q4 into, let's say, Q3 where we may normalize at the $600 million to $700 million, should be relatively -- from Q1 until the third quarter where we're supposed to be seeing the $600 million to $700 million, which should be pretty linear. If we will see that the winter is going to be a little bit lighter, we will see more impact on Q1. And then, yes, it may be starting with a 4. But again, right now, we'll simply need to see how the winter develops there and how the overall inventory clearing is going away.

From a margin point of view, it's a little bit different because on the variable areas, we do not see major changes happening over the next 3 quarters. The price that we pay for our product from a bill of materials point of view, of course, this is something that does not change materially. The thing that will really get a little bit better as we move forward is all of the, I would call, nonvariable items. So let's try to look at some of them. First of all, as mentioned in the prepared remarks, with new work with contract manufacturers and as good as they are in supporting you, after building a very large capacity aiming at growth that, of course, we see now that is not happening, we see that our contract manufacturers have fixed costs that we will have to help them cover when the changes or the reduction in the production level is going down. And this is weighing on our revenues, both in Q4 and in Q1 because this is the time that it takes for them to make these adjustments. And especially given the fact that at that time, the basis of revenues is going to be also lower. So therefore, the -- these economies of scale are working extra hours. We believe that around Q2, we will have much less of these chargers that will go away.

At the same time, we have prior to any cost reductions that we will do in efficiencies relatively flat expenses on the support department because we do not want to reduce the support level that we give today to our existing fleet and to our operations team. And therefore, here, it's mostly going to be related to the fact that the more revenues you have, you have a higher denominator and therefore, the percentage is going a little bit better. So if I try to summarize all of this, here, I do expect to see that you will not see a linear growth in gross margins, but it will be more tilted or the improvement will be more tilted towards, again, second quarter of 2024 and the third quarter. This is also, by the way, related to the fact that we will continue to ramp up our U.S. factory and see more IRAs. So it's a lot of moving parts but I would say quite leaner revenue return and less linear, more inclines towards Q2 gross margin change. And again, sorry for the many moving parts, but that's the complexity of the business.

[Philip Shen, analyst]

Shifting to cash flow and balance sheet. I know you guys have a lot of cash and marketable securities. I was wondering if you could share a little bit more on how you expect cash flow to be in the coming quarters as you kind of follow this correction do you expect how much burn do you see for Q4 and then through Q3 of next year? And then how do you expect working capital to trend I see the inventory line has gone up healthily or substantially. And when do you expect the bulk of that to kind of normalize as well?

[Ronen Faier, executive]

Okay. So here, the answer is that when you're growing, you actually usually need a little bit more working capital because you are manufacturing, you increase inventories, then you give customer credits. And then -- and that means that you consume a little bit more of working capital. When we look at cash flow for the next 3 quarters, let's talk about cash flow from operations, and let's also talk about the way about free cash flow because this is a result also of capital investments. So from a cash flow from operations, we expect to see actually an increase in the cash flow from operations generation. As I mentioned in my prepared remarks, we have generated about $41 million this quarter. We expect to see a much higher number in the fourth quarter and numbers to continuing increase towards Q1 and Q2, simply because of the fact that we have relatively large customer balances from the quarter that we shipped and sold a little bit more. As I mentioned, we also increased a little bit payment terms for our European customers. And therefore, within Q3 -- sorry, Q4 and Q1, we will collect relatively heavily on those.

When you look at the inventory levels that we're carrying, we're carrying quite high inventory levels because, again, we were anticipating growth. And that means that we're going to start consuming this inventory over time. This will also go back to the cash. And when it comes to paying to our vendors, the fact is that this is more correlated to your manufacturing levels. So therefore, when you're manufacturing less, you're actually paying less to your payables. So that means that we expect to see an accelerating cash flow from operations within in Q1 and hopefully starting to see again growth in revenues starting to impact cash flow in Q2, but it's still supposed to be positive and, of course, because of the fact that we still collect and using inventory.

The second part is how do we translate it to free cash flow and here as well, part of the activity that we're taking right now is to reduce our capital expenditures. A lot of our capital expenditures last year were aimed at increasing manufacturing capacity almost everywhere around the world. That means procurement of automatic assembly lines. That means, for example, payments for contract manufacturers to take more areas and make them suitable. This is something that, of course, right now, other than the investments that we do in the U.S. manufacturing will be very much reduced. In addition to this, of course, at this time, you're investing a little bit more in areas that when you're growing, you're allowing yourself to do like maybe a little bit of a newer labs or bigger labs. And that means that also not only we will see higher cash flow from operations, we will see lower cash flow in investing activities. So overall, we should see an accelerating growth in cash.

[Operator]

We'll take our next question from Corinne Blanchard of Deutsche Bank.

[Corinne Blanchard, analyst]

Could you maybe -- I mean, I know you provided a very good overview of the previous question, but would you be able to give a little bit more color about the U.S. and maybe broke it by state, which area you have seen strong demand in which 1 are waken how you -- we should be thinking about it going into next year?

[Zvi Lando, executive]

Yes. So Corinne, referring to our data that we use for this purpose is the installation rate that the main indicator for us are monitoring connections to our monitoring portal. So I can say that overall, the residential, the connection rate recently for the last, call it, 10, 12 weeks, has been relatively flat. And when we break it down by state, it's showing a small decline in California and the -- and an increase in some of the other states, for instance, Puerto Rico, in other states around the nation. This is on the residential inverter point of view.

For batteries, we're seeing a consistent increase in connection rate. And this is coming from California because although installation rates are down, installation of batteries are up from the historical pace because whoever or many of those that are installing in California are installing with batteries. And we also see some increase in battery installations in other states. Again, Puerto Rico is an example. So this is the residential picture where California is slightly down and other states accumulated are slightly up. And overall, the rate of installation for residential in the U.S. is relatively flat.

On commercial, as I mentioned also in the prepared remarks, we see in the installation, the same type of pattern that we're seeing on the sell-through data where after some period of installation rates of commercial being relatively flat. We're seeing a gradual increase, not dramatic, but still a positive trend on installation and connection of commercial projects. And as I mentioned, this is across the country with the -- specifically in the markets that are strong for commercial and it's -- we believe it's projects that have been held for some time because the people waiting for clarity on the IRA or for understanding the interest rate dynamics and the fact that there are low-cost modules and people understand that there won't be clarity on some of those elements for some time. So they're moving ahead with the projects that were on hold, and we expect this trend to continue.

[Corinne Blanchard, analyst]

All right. And maybe for a follow-up, switching a little bit here, but could you talk about the competition that you're seeing in the U.S., Tesla is coming out with new products. So what do you expect there? And maybe what does that mean in terms of pricing pressure over the next 3 or 4 quarters?

[Zvi Lando, executive]

Yes. We didn't get naturally in this call into a lot of product conversation, especially not on the single phase portfolio. But we are feeling good about our current single phase portfolio. We've recently introduced some improvements, have gained a lot of positive feedback on the reliability of the recently released product -- released product and the installation times and ease of installation of both the inverters and the batteries. And we feel that we're in a good trajectory from a market share perspective in the U.S., in particular in what we call the mid-tier installers. So we are have always been strong with a large tier. We are a bit weaker in the long tail. And we've been -- we believe we've been gaining some ground in the mid-tier. But these are incremental dynamics where we don't see a major change of pattern. And as a result, or related -- they're unrelated, we don't see major expectation for price changes in the U.S. market for the inverter offering.

Batteries in general, not only in the U.S., the battery market is more in an oversupply type of dynamic. And here and there for volume purposes, we might reduce battery pricing. But on the inverters and optimizers, we see price stability and expect it to continue.

[Operator]

We'll take our next question from Brian Lee of Goldman Sachs.

[Brian Lee, analyst]

I had a couple here. Just maybe a bigger picture because there's a lot of moving parts as well as numbers that are moving quite dramatically from what we've seen just the past couple of quarters. So maybe to start, you're talking about this normalized level of $600 million to $700 million of revenue, gross margins being $30 million to $32 million at that level, but then that's including 500 basis points. So core business is like 25% to 27% gross margin. But if I look at 2022, you were doing that level of revenues and doing higher gross margins without the IRA benefit? And even back then, you were struggling with the euro and then some component issues, but higher than 25% to 27% gross margin. So I don't know, it just seems like structurally, margins here are lower even if you do get back to the $600 million to $700 million revenue level. What's kind of driving that, maybe help us reconcile it a bit? And why can't you maybe take more costs out of the system? Because it feels like you're just again, margins are now the target is lower than what you had prior because prior, you weren't including 500 basis points from IRA?

[Ronen Faier, executive]

So sure, Brian. And thank you for the question. So in general, I think that there are 2 areas here. The 1 I will start by saying is that as we mentioned from the very beginning, the way that we are looking at this normalized level is a level that we see as a base based on the point-of-sale data that we saw in across the board, which we, by the way, believe that -- and again, we took it out of being cautious here after what we saw at least in the last 1.5 months actually or months ago. And therefore, we are still trying to evaluate whether this normalized level is really the new level that will go for several years from then -- from that point or that maybe in some cases, these should be actually a little bit of a higher rate. And that means that from adjusting our expense level is something that we are going to look very cautiously at each and every expense, making sure that we are making all the necessary adjustments and that we are taking all cost reduction activities that we're able to do but not returning to a situation that if the market is going up, and we did see this boom bust sometimes cycles within this market, we're finding ourselves again, having to chase after capacity and having to air-ship products because, again, this is something that we've seen in the last years as well.

So I would say that from the beginning, while modeling, we took a very cautious approach into how we should build our expense base and how we are going to operate the company, assuming that this is not necessarily the level that we will see 2 or 3 quarters down the road. It doesn't mean -- and I think that that's a big difference between modeling and actually going into the real-world assumption, it doesn't mean that we will not do whatever effort needed in order to make sure that we are indeed capitalizing on every cost reduction activity that we can do. But we wanted to be a little bit more cautious in modeling here. So that's, I would call it, from the very beginning, the limitation of the model itself.

The second element that we need to take here is the fact that we do see that our commercial percentage within our portfolio continues to grow. As mentioned before, in this quarter, 66% of the megawatts shipped was actually commercial product. This is the record high that we see. Maybe it's a little bit tilted towards commercial because of the fact that these were products that we were lacking because of components before. But still, we do see that, at least in the commercial applications we're getting stronger, our offering is good, and we're growing. And we wanted to give a little bit of attention to this as well.

And the last thing that's related here is the fact that we do expect that we will continue to see maybe a little bit more growth in other areas that will allow us to grow a little bit further like new products. And again, while we don't put the revenue here being conservative, these are usually products that are characterized with at least at the beginning, lower gross margin. So in general, I would say that we try to be here a little bit more conservative in the way that we are modeling things. We will be making every effort to adjust to the new level as we see it. And of course, we will learn as long as we're moving. And by the way, we intend to continue and give you in the next calls a little bit of color about how do we see the normalized level because we do believe that we will gather more information. And this increase in commercial that will also allow us, by the way, to increase the revenue base is something that we see. We -- in general, I can tell you that we're aiming to get, of course, to the highest profitability possible and higher margins possible. And this will be our action for the next 2 to 3 quarters.

[Brian Lee, analyst]

Okay. I appreciate that additional context. And then just maybe kind of a follow-up to some of the earlier questions. I could see investors growing concern that this is more than just an inventory correction given the magnitude and also the duration. Like how do you think about the share position here, whether in U.S. or Europe or both, like can you provide some evidence or data points or anything that gives you the comfort that this is everyone going through the same correction versus maybe there is some share loss that you guys are experiencing? And one of the things I guess, we hear a lot about is there are 2 peers like SMA and Sungrow, who have had recent updates that were relatively positive. I know they're not all positive in the inverter space these days, but just maybe give us a sense of what you see out there, data-wise back-wise, that gives you comfort, it's not a share issue at all.

[Zvi Lando, executive]

Yes. Thanks, Brian. Obviously, it's something that we look at -- we look at it very closely. And I'll give you a data point that is it's subjective and it's worth what it is. And focusing on the markets that we serve. Obviously, we don't serve the utility market, and we don't -- so some of the names that you're referring to are related to dynamics in the utility market that are different. But we recently sampled with one of the largest European distributors and I'll take a step back, actually. Related also to what I said in my earlier comments, in the latter part of 2022 we definitely sense that we were losing share just based on availability. So the demand was very strong. The demand was very strong for our products. We couldn't supply all of it. And we -- and there were installers that in the urgency to install that were long-term SolarEdge installers tried other products. We mapped that out. And once availability became less of a concern for us, we in a systematic way in every country identify the installers that will based on our monitoring system have decreased their usage of SolarEdge because of lack of availability and have been going back and recovering those one by one, to be using SolarEdge once availability was no longer a constraint.

And recently, we sat with one of the largest distributors pan-European distributor and went through their share picture from an inverter suppliers point of view. And this also relates to something that I mentioned in the call last quarter, that during periods of shortage, people bring on and they widen their line card to include more brands. And then as the market goes back to normal, they reduce the line card. And with this distributor, going country by country, overall, we saw -- they reported an increase of our share in their sales in 2023. This was in the first 8 months of 2023 relative to the same period in 2022. So we've been looking at that at a high level of detail. And although there are fluctuations and as I said, we haven't recovered all of the share that we lost due to availability in the second half of 2022, we are -- we are optimistic about the signs that we've been seeing since the beginning of 2023 and recovering that share. So we don't see that as part of the dynamics that are related to the inventory situation that we described.

[Operator]

Our next question is from Colin Rusch of Oppenheimer.

[Colin Rusch, analyst]

Guys, can you talk a little bit about incremental geographies that you guys might be able to move into that are growing and a healthy rate, particularly in the rest of the world or other geographies that [ you ended up ] exiting out of here in this transition?

[Zvi Lando, executive]

Yes, I think we spoke about Europe and it's not necessarily -- there are some markets that are beginning to evolve that you would have never mentioned their names before, and I addressed some of them in the past, like Slovenia or Romania, in places like that. And they're usually influenced from some central country nearby. For instance, in some of these, it's mostly influenced from Italy. And these are slowly evolving markets and from our central location, again, in this case, Italy, we will oversee or we will be active in these markets as well. There are other markets that are not -- they were -- they did exist before but they're picking up recently. And then we increase our presence in those markets. And the glaring cases like that, or countries like Spain and in Greece, by the way, years back in 2012, we had market share in Greece that was probably, I don't know, 60% or 70%. And then the market was quiet for many years, and now it's back. We have a huge installed base in Greece and our growth rate in Spain is very, very high, but it's still relatively small numbers.

So there are -- like there are a few countries where it's a completely new dynamic -- and there are some countries that are -- that were small markets that are beginning to grow a bit sinter, and those would be the examples within Europe. Outside of Europe, there's a lot of talk in Brazil and definitely, our momentum in Brazil is positive. In Asia, Thailand is a market that is growing quickly. Taiwan is a market that is growing quickly. The Philippines is a market that is growing and evolving. And at the same time, for instance, we realized that the Korean market is not what we expected it to be, and we reduced the level of our activity in the Korean market. So there are -- there are opportunities in these markets. But I think under the current circumstances and interest rate environment, the Europe and the U.S. are much larger in terms of the potential to gain share and see improvement in demand. compared to growth in some of these markets, although we are benefiting from it.

[Colin Rusch, analyst]

That's super helpful. And then the follow-up is really about the internal battery cell manufacturing and how that's ramping up and given the sell-through on the batteries and some of the inventory that you're mentioning there, how you're dealing with and expecting to manage your third-party sale agreements along with that internal production?

[Zvi Lando, executive]

Yes. I think the -- I'll try to answer in 2 ways. As you know, our current offering is based on -- of our residential batteries is based on third-party cells. And we intended to ramp the factoring and shift over to using the sales from the factory for that -- for offering to these markets. At the current time, considering the lower installation rate, it's increasing, but it's lower than what we anticipated. We don't expect that shift to happen in 2024. And in 2024, our residential battery offering will continue to be based on our third-party cells. And meanwhile, we're ramping the factory and we will continue to ramp the factory and sell those sales as we ramp to customers of our storage business that some of them are historical that we've been selling to 2 years, and now we will have more capacity and a better cost structure. And some of them are new customers nonsolar related energy storage or high C-rate cell applications.

So in 2024, our solar attached single-phase batteries will be -- continue to be based on the third-party cell supply that we have today.

[Operator]

We will take our next question from Mark Strouse of JPMorgan.

[Mark W. Strouse, analyst]

Two of them, please. I think the first one, just following up on Brian's question. it kind of sounds like the distributor cancellations, the order cancellations and delays that you saw accelerated in the latter half of the quarter. Has that now stabilized? I'm just trying to get a sense of -- you mentioned some upside risk to that $600 million to $700 million. What gives you comfort that there's no further downside to that number?

[Zvi Lando, executive]

Yes. So maybe Mark first at data point. Actually, our highest ever sell-through month globally or actually in Europe, ever was June. So in June of 2023, we reached a record or our distributors reached a record of sell-through of our products. So -- and then July, the sell-through was a bit lower, but July is typically a vacation month in Europe. So the shift in pattern was around the summer and the picture got clear, as mentioned during the -- to our distributors and then to us in the second half of the quarter. And that is where the installation rate decline took place. And it's -- and as we said, it's from a quarter-over-quarter perspective, from Q3 to Q2 across all of Europe, if I remember correctly, the number was 22% quarter-over-quarter reduction, although it was still higher than the same quarter -- the same quarter of last year.

We are looking at installation rates because the indicator of sell-through, we receive it at a later date until the all of the distributors collect their information and provide it to us. The indicator that is less accurate, but we have a much more live view is the indicator of installation rate and connection to the monitoring. And the connection to the monitoring in recent weeks in the last couple of months in Europe has been up in places like Germany, Austria, Switzerland, some of the other countries and has been down in the Netherlands as we reported. But overall, the installation rate has been relatively stable across Europe since the drop that we saw towards the end of the summer and the end of the third quarter, and going into the fourth quarter. Now is that -- does that give confidence that the -- it won't go down further or when will it begin to pick up in that rate, that obviously, we have judgment but not through visibility, but this is the data point on which we are setting the baseline scenario in the revenue -- the stabilized revenue projection that we gave.

[Mark W. Strouse, analyst]

Okay. And then just a follow-up. Can you talk about your appetite to kind of lean into your balance sheet during this macro downturn? I mean you've got because of your balance sheet, you might have some where with all the -- some of your competitors may not have. Can you talk about the appetite to lean into R&D to potentially look at some M&A so that you're even better positioned coming out of this downturn competitively?

[Zvi Lando, executive]

So I'll use the opportunity, Mark, to give a broader perspective that is not directly related to the balance sheet. It's partially related to the balance sheet and partially related to the P&L. With all that's going on, it's important to put in perspective that we are firm believers in -- not only in the long term but also the midterm trajectory of this market. And the core markets that we serve, which are rooftop solar of residential and C&I. And not only in the long-term growth of these markets for PV and inverters and optimizers, but also the evolution of the broader solutions that we're seeing that include batteries, EV chargers, smart energy management software to manage the grid services applications, cyber protection. So at the highest level for us in terms of priority is to continue and develop the portfolio products that is going to serve these markets and put us in the leadership or keep us in the leadership position that we are.

And we see this situation and the modeling that we gave also as a transient is not sure how long it will take and when it will happen, but in a market that is attractive that has long-term value and that we are very well positioned to lead. And that includes the answer to the question that you have and where we see the potential to strengthen, accelerate or improve our differentiation along those served markets, we will use also our balance sheet our balance sheet to do so, definitely.

[Operator]

Our next question comes from Julian Dumoulin-Smith of Bank of America.

[Julien Dumoulin-Smith, analyst]

Thank you, operator. Appreciate it. Good afternoon, team. Really appreciate the opportunity. look, just to kind of circle back here to Square One, can we recap a little bit about how we got here, right? I mean I know we are talking very specifically about the trajectory of the recovery. But can we step back a little bit and understand you talked a moment ago about June '23 being a high watermark. But obviously, there was some share insider transactions during the summer. And then obviously, things rapidly deteriorated. How do we get confidence on the outlook here? Can you walk us through a little bit more of the sort of month-by-month playbook from that June '23 watermark to where we are today, if you will, through the course of the year. Obviously, how it gives you the confidence in 4Q, but just how this happens so swiftly at such a pace that we didn't see this or presumably you guys didn't identify it earlier and it's coming.

Again, I just really want to step back and kind of highlight that and how swiftly the cycle moved? And what are the parameters that perhaps lessons learned that you guys would identify today after what sort of transpired here? If you don't mind, and I appreciate your thoughtfulness around this.

[Ronen Faier, executive]

Yes, Julian, thank you for the question. So I'll start maybe by going back to Q1 because we need to understand that again, this pattern that we see is coming after 2022 that was a COVID year. And when we're trying to analyze the business and see where is it going, we're looking at, I would say, 3 major sets of data. The first one is, of course, how much we're shipping and where we're shipping it. Second is, what is the point of sale data that we see coming out from our distributors and as mentioned by CV, it's something that we measure on a monthly basis. And then we're looking at the inventory levels that are basically a result of these 2 things. Up until the very beginning of Q1, we saw that our shipping is almost one-to-one correlated and merged with the point-of-sale data that we saw from our distributors. So that means that on one hand, you saw very little inventory days in the channel. If you recall from our calls at that time, we said that in some cases, we saw close to 0 inventory of 3-phase products, and we sometimes saw 1 or 1.5 months of a single-phase product. And this is something that we have looked at consistently.

At the beginning of Q1, we started to see a relief when it comes to our ability to manufacture single-phase products and we saw gradual relief that actually materialized in full only in Q3 this year in our ability to provide 3-phase products, especially the commercial products. So what we saw is that during Q1 and into Q2 and Q3, we came back to the normality of a growing market where our shipment into the channel are lower than the -- sorry going up are higher than the actual point of sale. But when we took the 2 ratios, our sales into the channels and the point-of-sale data we saw that the overall days inventory on hand are ranging between 60 to 90 days, which is the normal level that we would usually see. And by the way, it depends based on the distributors, some of them would like to be at a higher level because they're less efficient or more a distributor and some will be more tight. But we started to see a very nice correlation between the 2, we saw a very steep increase in the point-of-sale data. sell-through data. And therefore, we felt comfortable with the numbers -- with the numbers that we're shipping. And we continue to monitor all the time the inventory on hand [indiscernible].

Now when we're getting the reports on a monthly basis, usually, it happens around the 20th of the following months. So I would say that when -- we started July. We, at the 20th of July, approximately got the June numbers from Europe that were significantly higher than everything that we've seen before. These were record high numbers. And as such, our customers continue to make orders and -- or to accept orders because the backlog was already there. If you remember, we had a very large backlog. Comes the end of August, we are receiving the July data, which is lower than June, but this is again typical because we see a lot of vacations happening in Europe around this time. And we see a decline. But by the way, not a huge decline, but we do see a decline.

Usually, August numbers are either flat or, I would say, relatively similar to the ones that we see in July. So come the end after the 20th of September that we're getting the August numbers from Europe and the United States, and we see that August is down compared to July, again, not dramatically down, but it is down. But at that time, this is very end of September, our distributors start to see -- and by the way, we do not, but they start to see that September is not materializing as they expected. And usually, the pattern that we used to see over the last, I would say, several years, is that usually you see a slower July and August compared to June, but then you see a jump in September. Actually, we were told by them that the expectation is to see a very strong September and they acted upon this.

But when they started to see that September is not materializing, this is the last, I would say, 2 weeks of the quarter. We saw an increasing declines of orders and a much more pressure to delay orders. And when we received actually close to, I would say, again, 15 to 20 of October, the September data, we actually found that September, for the first time for many years was lower than the actual August numbers. And this is the area that was a little bit surprising.

Now the result is -- and this is what is leading to our Q4 numbers and guidance is that, again, when you take the inventory levels that you see that we're continuing to grow up again because everyone until sometimes the middle of August expected to see relatively a similar behavior. Now you see that the inventory on the hand days are very, very high, much higher than the 90 days that usually are in the channels. And this is when we understood, together, by the way, with our customers that December can -- or the fourth quarter cannot look even like the 1 that was Q3 because of this decrease. The data that we're now waiting for, and again, we do not have yet is how October looks like. We believe that it's going to be better than September. I do not have any data to see how big better it is but this is the basis of our cautiousness.

So as you can understand, this is a pattern where the deviation from the pattern that we used to see was something that was actually, I would say, understood in the 2 to 3 last weeks of September and not before. And that led to basically the fact that a lot of our cancellations and orders came actually at that point of time or push outs. So I hope I answered your question.

[Zvi Lando, executive]

Maybe, Julian, on the topic of -- of course, the dynamic is when I described from it, but we need to learn from it. One of the elements that is meaningful that also we are talking with our distributors and how to handle is visibility into the inventory levels at the installers because what happened is part of this dynamic is of we're coming off of an unprecedented event in terms of the surge in demand, the lack of availability, everybody was building on inventory, including installers that typically don't take on inventory and especially inventory of products they prefer to install. Then when they slow down, they slow down their orders, but they had inventory and they consumed it and that was not visible. So in terms of data points to add to the data that we typically track of installation rates, sell-through inventory levels at our distributors is inventory levels that our large installers, that will help have a better clarity when fluctuations occur, especially such extreme fluctuations.

[Operator]

We'll take our next question from Jeff Osborne of Cowen.

[Jeffrey Osborne, analyst]

Two quick questions on my side. Ronen, what demand levels were assumed when you talked about a normalization of revenue at $600 million to $700 million, is that sort of flat with current levels? That was part one of the question. And part two is just as the industry normalizes whenever that is next summer, why wouldn't there be a knife fight in terms of pricing? I know you said there was a sort of stable outlook in the quarter and in the near term. and payment terms were more important to distributors. But it looks like it's a tech industry with now excess capacity. Obviously, you're rationalizing capacity. I'm not sure others will. But why wouldn't pricing go down meaningfully in the second half of the year?

[Ronen Faier, executive]

Okay. So first of all, I'll start by saying that, yes, as you mentioned, the way that we modeled the normalized level is taking the point-of-sale data for the last 3 months as it is. And therefore, yes, if there's going to be recovery in this, then we can see a higher number. I would say that we do take in our numbers also an assumption about changes in pricing. As you have mentioned, right now, we did not change our prices within Q3. And I'm not sure that we will do anything on the inverter side, at least in given the fact that we believe that with the inventory levels that you see right now, there is almost 0 impact on changing pricing. First of all, because nobody is taking orders. So if they're taking very little orders, no reason to change the pricing because everyone is selling the inventory that they have, plus we do not see that it can actually change their behavior along the elasticity of demand curves.

So I must say that moving forward, we do assume that prices will have to be adjusted in some places. It is going to be very much related to the offering that we see, for example, the more markets are moving to dynamic rates. These are going actually to products that are a little bit maybe more expensive because of the fact that they're allowing better capabilities, we do believe that maybe in batteries, we will have to adjust down prices because when we look at the competition today, yes, our prices, I would say, are not the cheapest that you see in the market. And I can tell you that in our stabilization number, there is a baked-in assumption on possible price adjustment that we will need or may need to implement. The reason that we put in there even if we're not sure if we'll have to take them, as I mentioned in my answer to Brian after this unprecedented event that we're missing a quarter never happened this company history, we wanted also to be very cautious in the way that we're modeling.

[Operator]

We'll take our next question from Jonathan Kees of Daiwa Capital Markets.

[Jonathan Kees, analyst]

I'll keep mine quick in the interest of time. So I wanted to ask regarding, I guess, the call up in Israel. You talked about it's about 11% of your staff there and 6% worldwide. That seems kind of to me, I guess somewhat significant, maybe not material but significant. I wanted to ask, is that the call more across the board? Or especially in Israel, is that more like with the -- your business folks, your professionals engineers, obviously, under 40 and male or is it across the board in terms of just occupational and the professional level. I'll leave it with that, and I'll take the rest of my questions offline.

[Zvi Lando, executive]

Yes. So a quick correction, it's male and female. So it's not -- it's even in that regard. Our manufacturing and business activities are mostly operated outside of Israel and not dependent on anything significant in Israel, not infrastructure and not people. And that's why this does not have any impact on our execution towards our customers. From an R&D perspective, there is an impact, as I mentioned, the caught-up is quite evenly distributed across the different departments and that gives us the ability to reallocate and move around people to make sure that the main projects are staffed with critical mass to move them forward. And it's actually aligned with the business discussion that we're having over here that this type of business environment is the right one to focus and to identify what are the real key drivers of the business and put the right quantity and quality of people on them. So that's what we're doing for both reasons. So it's -- I think it's -- in that regard, what is important to execute in the business, we will -- we are able to support without interruption.

[Operator]

Our final question comes from Andrew Percoco of Morgan Stanley.

[Andrew Percoco, analyst]

I just want to discuss some of these backlog cancellations and apologies if you already answered this, but can you maybe just walk through your decision-making process on why you decided to accommodate those requests? And I guess how do we gain comfort that this is truly a one-off in nature? And I guess, is there anything that you got in return, maybe concessions on payment terms for future orders or just to make it maybe a little bit more mutually beneficial in the long run?

[Zvi Lando, executive]

Yes. I'll keep it short, but we've been operating in Europe since 2010. We grew our position and market share in multiple countries through building long-term relationships and delivering quality products and services. And we've done this with a network of partners, both distribution partners and installation partners across all of these countries. And we intend to continue and do that with them for years to come. So that is at the core of our decision process and consideration is that this is the long-term huge market. These are quality players that we've been working with and we will continue to do so. And fluctuations in ups and downs and helping each other out during critical times and not sticking to the letter of the law to force them to take inventory that they don't need and put them in a financial hazard, we thought that's not the right thing to do as part of our long-term view of the future of the market and where we are within that market.

[Operator]

And this does conclude today's question-and-answer session as well as our call for this afternoon. You may now disconnect your lines, and everyone, have a great day.

[Zvi Lando, executive]

Thank you.