Sunpower (SPWRA) kicked off the solar earnings season tonight with a strong quarter, beating analyst estimates by a wide margin and matching the whisper number of .42/share.  Revenues also came in better than expected at $466 million vs the estimate of $420 million.  That represents a 26% decrease from the year ago quarter on the earnings side and a 24% increase on the revenue side/  The company guided about in line for the full year 2009 with an EPS estimate of $1.15 – 1.25/share vs the Wall St estimate of $1.21/share.  Revenues are estimated in the range of $1.425 – 1.5 billion vs Wall St estimates of $1.43 billion.  Despite the strong quarter, shares are trading down more than 10% in after hours trading.  The only thing I can think of as a reason for the selling is that the guidance range for the full year starts a bit lower than what Wall St expected and the earnings number could have been considerably better considering the revenue beat.  Other than that, it was a real solid quarter from Sunpower.

Here are some highlights of comments made by executives:

– growing dealer channel into France, Korea and Canada
– successfully executed on large scale projects
– achieved new record with more than 60MW of Sunpower plants under construction
–  all manufacturing facilities now fully operational
– ended quarter with more than $800 million in cash and investments
– financing markets remain challenging but seeing improvements in availability in financing for its projects