SunPower : Year of Change Positions SunPower for Long-Term Success

I've experienced many market transitionssince joining SunPower as its CEO in 2003,but it's hard to think of a year withmore significant shifts than 2020. When I began working in solar, it was an uphill battle to get people to take our industry seriously. Rooftop panels were for those on the fringe of environmentalism, and mass adoption of our technology seemed to be decades away.

Seventeen years later, we are a leader in an industry that is70 times as large. Today, major American corporations usesolar to save money and reach aggressive sustainability goals. Homeowners are adopting solar and storage systems because it's sustainable - and an increasingly lessexpensive and more reliable source of energy than what they can get from the traditional grid. People that live in apartments are accessing solar energy from shared community sites. And we'veonly just begun.

2020 has been a year of change for all people and all industries as we've worked to adapt and overcome in the face of one of the greatest global challenges in our lifetimes. COVID-19 has changed the way SunPower works, from shifting sales to virtual sales consultationsto conducting a large portion of our business from home offices. None of this has been easy, and I want to express my deep gratitude to the SunPower team forthe creativity and hard work put in to ensure another successful year.

For SunPower, our year of change wasn't just brought on by the pandemic. In August, we spun off our panel manufacturing businessin order to clarify our mission and set the stage for focused growth and expansion. We are incredibly proud of the work we've done to set a high bar with the most powerful and efficient panels in the industry, and we see a great futurein distributed generation, pairing solar energy with storage and software.

We believe that solar rooftops will soon become the norm in every American neighborhood and that most of those roofs will be paired with a batterystorage systemto ensure affordable and reliable electricity.We are already on our way - Wood MacKenziepredicts that by 2025, more than 25% of all behind-the-meter solar systems will be paired with storage, up from under 5% in 2019. Some of our dealers are seeing attach rates that already well exceed that prediction.

With solar plus storage and the ability to monitor comes more control over how, when and where you use your electricity, and consumersneed software and mobile apps that makethis seamless and easy. In the near future, storing, managing and using your solar energy should beas simple as managing your online bank account.

This is our mission: to change the way our world is powered. For this new era of energy to work, it must be available to everyone. The events of 2020 have shown that there is work to be done to ensure equity for all Americans, and our industry is no exception. We can't stand on the sidelines. We must do our part to deliver environmental justice and to make solar energy accessible to all, including low-income communities and communities of color.

Our vision and goals are clear, and in working towardsthemwe can help our nation reach its renewable energy goals while fueling the economy with well-paying jobs. We are already making progress. This year we put solar on 12,000 new homes and retrofitted 30,000more. We are shipping and installing SunVault™ storage systems at a rapid rate, withsupply chainsbased in Alabama and Minnesota. We are expandingour salesand installation teams across the country as demand for solar + storage increases. Congress just passed a bipartisan bill that extends the Solar Investment Tax Credit(ITC), an important step towardsmaximizing the potential of distributed solar and storagein the coming years.

As a result of this growth, we expect to hiremore than 300 professionalsnationwidenext year. And we are proud to work with our dealer network which includes685 American small businesses across 46 states; altogether, these dealers employ more than 17,000 people.

Solar represents the future of American energy. Our job is to make it happen. While the past year has shown that this mission won't be easy, it has also shown that our company has the talent, resilience and clarity of purpose to reach its goals. We expect 2021 to be a year of growth for SunPower as we lead the way in providing solar energyservices, and as we will invest in new talent across America to make it happen.Thank you to everyone at SunPower for your work in building this bright future.

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