Hi there,
I am trying to get a better understanding of the solar environment in Australia (NSW, QLD, VIC). However, having talked to a few retailers and installers, the feedback vaires a lot, especially when it comes to margins. While many say that they are suffering high competition and shrinking margins, others claim to have solid EBITDA margins of above 20%.
Anyone experience on the margins of solar installers and retailers?
There are over###-###-#### installers in Australia, but does anyone know the number of retailers?
Best, Tab
Anyone in the space of Solar in Australia?
by a searcher from Bergische Universität Gesamthochschule Wuppertal
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Tabraiz, your experience doesn't sound off for an industry like this with a large number of players and a long distribution. There will be a very long tail in that 7000 installers, of which I expect many would just be individual contractors. In a space like this margins will vary - I guess that's what search is all about - find the higher margin businesses and work out if their position is defensible and the margins will hold. I think it's a suck it and see problem - you just need to get searching and see the financials of a range of businesses in the segment. I don't think you'll get an accurate number on the number of solar retailers.
Solar in Australia currently has government subsidies, and is going to have some risk around that - the B2C space is notoriously full of cowboys. The government in the past has subsidised rain water tanks (during water shortages), and also ceiling insulation - in both instances the government pulled the subsidies overnight and demand tanked in both industries taking many businesses under. I saw that first hand when the company I was with sold fire retardants into roofing insulation - it went boom to bust over a couple of years. There are B2C marketers who have moved from one government subsidy program to the next - a few of the cowboys doing roof insulation are now doing solar.