Dumoulin-Smith: Loan-dependent residential solar installers will be phased out
Julian Dumoulin-Smith · Tumult in residential solar · Jul 10, 2025 · at 26:57
Jefferies analyst Julian Dumoulin-Smith and Shayle Kann discuss how federal tax credit policies and interest rates are driving consolidation toward third-party solar leases.
0:00 / 0:46exact quote · 46.3s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The individual installers who had been principally selling loans and had sidestepped this whole conversation to a large extent. That's really going to continue to be phased out, and in many ways, what I would argue to you is, like, when you look at, you know, the trend over the last years, where you've seen residential solar companies take advantage of the IRA, which only authorize domestic contents and only authorize energy communities to leasing companies, you know, frankly, that already shifted the market share away from loans. The higher interest rates Themselves shifted people away from loans, right? That has been the story of consolidation for the last two years running, and that's only going to be magnified here from what we can tell with the 25 DEPs phasing out at the end of the year.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Julian Dumoulin-Smith
Dumoulin-Smith: Solar leasing volume will rise in 2026 despite market contraction
“20, 26 is going to be, again, I would call it extraordinarily dynamic in a market which you could argue the market itself is going to decline in absolute terms. And yet for the incumbent leasing companies, arguably their volumes on a discrete basis are going t…”
Dumoulin-Smith: Residential solar is no longer a growth sector
“It doesn't appear to be a growth sector anymore. It's a sector and, you know, overall volumetric decline potentially for several years in a row.”
Dumoulin-Smith: U.S. residential solar dealer markups will fall without tax credits
“As we see the tax sort of come out, you're going to see that spread, that difference in how you know, you price residential solar in the U.S. Start to come up, right? The dealer markups and the like start to come down.”
Dumoulin-Smith: Interest rate hikes are the principal driver of rising solar prices
“Yes, this is an incredibly interest rate sensitive product. Interests go up. That is the principal driver of raising prices.”
Dumoulin-Smith: Residential solar competition prevented passing rate hikes to consumers
“Look, in theory, if it was less of a competitive space, you would say interest rates go up, the cost of solar goes up to homeowners, and ergo, it just effectively passed along, right? We talk a lot about inflation in the current environment, and we talk a lot …”
Dumoulin-Smith: Debt rollover issues drove major residential solar bankruptcies
“Making sure that you're very diligent to keep the maturity profile and give yourself a lot of latitude is, is truly important. I think that's really what ended up being a critical factor for at least a couple of the major bankruptcies in the last few years. Ju…”