By coinnews 
00:00 Speaker A
It’s really important how investors are looking within this sort of alternative energy and solar space, because these tariffs will potentially advantage the solar panel makers, but it’s going to affect different companies in different ways. Let’s talk about the panel makers first. What it can mean from them and whether they’re a buy related to these tariffs.
00:26 Speaker B
Now, first of all, thank you for having me over here. Uh these staffs are definitely super high, uh right? Uh we’ve already seen more than 100, 150% tariffs historically. The same panels cost 11 cents internationally, cost 25, 30 cents in the US. Now this is before all these tariffs. So these prices will increase. But what’s interesting is that because some of these tariffs were anticipated, lot of the manufacturers have moved out of Southeast Asia to other countries. Uh, but the bigger risk now is what if US imposes tariffs on these other countries, say India, South Korea or others. So I think that risk still remains over here. I mean whenever any imports from any country reach 3% of total module imports, that’s when new investigations get triggered. So you can see more of that later this year. So given that backdrop, I think first solar which is like the biggest uh domestic solar module manufacturer in the US, these are the biggest beneficiary of this. Um, so we see some increase in module prices, but still TBD how much it’ll be. Uh but modules are only 30% of the cost of a solar system. Um so the total impact on cost for project developer is not that huge. I think the bigger issues with batteries which come from China, but I think for solar modules it’s somewhat manageable.
03:04 Speaker A
And how many of First Solar’s manufacturing of the the uh panels or the modules, how much of that happens in the US?
03:16 Speaker B
Sure. So uh by end of next year, they’ll have 20 gigawatts of that 12 and a half gigawatts would be in the US, uh around three four in India and the rest in Southeast Asia. So they’ll still have some tariff exposure to India and Southeast Asia, but the math which we did, like even if you go back to uh the liberation day uh tariffs on India and Southeast Asia, uh for first solar, they still benefit uh on the US capacity. So we still think there’s four to five dollars of incremental EPS even if these international facilities are tariffed for them in 26.