And yes, I dont know whats more impressive, time of your career at SunPower and in the industry or Ben pulling out a calculator to figure out all the quarters he has been on with you, but kudos to you both. Experience in change management and change leadership. And so I think we see larger opportunity in that light commercial space for the ITC refundability to really drive increase TAM. Our annualized April bookings run-rate is approaching $50 million and we expect to reach $100 million of bookings run-rate before end of this year.
In fact, weve more than doubled the number of dealer appointments we generate every week. Analyze and report on the budgetary impact of compensation decisions. Ive spent a lot of time in my first 3 weeks meeting with some of our biggest dealers and plan to spend more and more time there. At the same time, we have continued to invest in those initiatives that we feel offer the greatest growth opportunities, TAM expansion, our digital, financial and services platforms that as well as looking to adjacent markets for future growth. For the second quarter, we expect continued strength in our residential business with Q2 residential and light commercial volume growth of approximately 20% sequentially and over 50% increase versus prior year, partially offset by the timing of certain project milestones in our large commercial business, which is expected to be in line with Q2 2020 results. Great. Ive talked to the dealers in these first few weeks, and Ive taken a look at the tools and technology, I see a lot of that same opportunity here. From a light commercial perspective where we are working with our dealers and oftentimes smaller customers, thats been one of the harder places for us to be able to provide that broad suite of financial offerings. Please turn to Slide 5. I couldnt hear you very well. You may now disconnect. Thanks so much, guys. Please turn to Slide 8. You are talking about bookings now of $100 million. Your job seeking activity is only visible to you. Third, we continue to add to our community solar pipeline, which now exceeds 115 megawatts. Trends remained strong and we expect to maintain our market share leadership as our pipeline now exceeds 275 megawatts. We also made significant progress in relation to our storage and service initiatives during the quarter. If a range of proffered wage was used in application, we use the middle point in the range to calculate average salary. Moving on to our Q1 results, overall, we continue to execute on our strategic priorities during the quarter to position the company for success in 2021 and beyond. Conduct compensation training for HR and the recruiting team. Based on this, we see an incremental market opportunity of more than $225 billion. What were really trying to do is pick the dealers who have the highest quality customer experience and we have the ability to scale up and meet what we believe is this increase in demand that were going to see coming. The significant growth expected in residential revenue and margins in 2021 makes it a greater contributor to SunPower value creation compared to a percentage of megawatts recognized for this year. Yes, were so excited. And no offense and I know you are good at math. Just if you have a view there? As we look ahead, we remain excited about our future. I think fixed charges are just not going to be popular with customers. These efforts include expanding our loan partnership with TCU as well as new lease financing programs. Thank you. In my first week, Ive met with the governors of California in Michigan, have a meeting in 2 hours with Secretary Granholm, Department of Energy, and expect to be meeting with a couple of senators before the weeks over. Proven ability to work with minimal guidance, manage multiple priorities simultaneously, and take initiative under unfamiliar or ambiguous circumstances. Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Manu. And more importantly, it gives us more deeper relationship with the customer that allows us to up-sell and enhance the long-term customer value for SunPower. Tom, thank you for your service. With that, I will turn the call back to Peter for our guidance. I would now like to discuss our guidance. So specifically, how many new partners might you be able to bring on perhaps this year or next year as you talk about lowering the customer acquisition costs, how much could they go down by with this strategy in particular? And then we are quite pleased with the demand from consumers. I think its a terrific question, Colin. Got it. Our next question is from Philip Shen with ROTH Capital Partners. And if you exclude our investments in digital and products, which we see as more capital deployment rather than OpEx, OpEx per watt was $0.27. Peter? Its one of the reasons we see storage as such a big opportunity to really impact the bottom line is because we can amortize that cost over a bigger revenue base. Before I turn the call over to questions, I would like to briefly discuss a couple of the positive tailwinds we see for 2022 that we see as incremental upside to our current forecast. Kind of as you mentioned, there is really two issues here on the supply chain side, and it definitely is challenging out there. I think our storage plans always included a strong second half ramp, and we are still hopeful we can hit our 2021 goals. They may also reveal information or provide tips on interviewing skill requirements, and other factors that could help when applying for a position at that company. We also expect residential value creation on a per watt basis to further increase in 2021 and beyond through shift to more full systems and lowering of cost of capital, which is now below previously communicated 6%, thereby contributing to significant increase in value creation in 22 and beyond. On the left side of the page, we highlight what we believe are the top renewable initiatives in the plan as well as the proposed funding for each. Thank you. And my plan is to preserve this wonderful heritage and build upon that over time. Second, capitalizing on increasing demand for offsite front-of-the-meter storage solutions through continued investment in our Helix platform. We are going to start with the needs of our customers and work backwards, with the goal of earning and keeping customer trust. SunVault, I think you guys have been pretty clear on sort of the ramp timing and outlook for that. Thanks, guys. We are highly focused on shortening these lead times and see them returning closer to expected levels by the end of the second quarter. Thanks for taking my questions. Thank you, Tom. We will need some small dealers. With that, I would like to turn the call over for questions. And we have our next question from Michael Weinstein with Credit Suisse. And we agree with your assessment, by the way. Welcome to the SunPower First Quarter 2021 Results Conference Call. Its an honor to be the CEO of SunPower. Its the best panel in the business. And so do our dealers. But its in particular, for me, as I took a look at SunPower in this opportunity, I was so amazed by the leadership and technology that this company has had over the last 20 years. Hi, good morning everyone. There is never been a better opportunity for this industry to take advantage of the momentum we have here. And I think really starting in 2022 its an incremental revenue growth driver for the company. Our next question is from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer. Its incredible. Yes. Complete and conduct periodic salary surveys to ensure competitiveness.
And weve just gotten better and better and more efficient at signing those opportunities through a variety of methods. We also remain bullish about the future of our SunVault storage solution as demand remains high. I would say we definitely have seen cost increases in freight and some materials. Sign in to save Sr. Yes. One is when we pair storage with solar in our traditional behind the meter business. Sign in to create your job alert for Senior Manager Compensation jobs in Austin, TX.
I appreciate that clarification. Background in sales operations, finance, or HR. To search for jobs in other locations, fill in the title and locations to begin your search. We do, too. For 2021, we are however increasing our investments in digital and products for key TAM expansion initiatives like front-of-the-meter storage that will help improve long-term value creation for SunPower. Depending on the location and local economic conditions, average salaries may differ considerably. Visibility for the balance of the year is strong and we are well-positioned with a strong run-rate going into the second half of 2021 and expect this trend to continue in 2022 and beyond. This table reports the average proffered salary of labor condition applications for H-1B Visa and labor certifications for green card filed by Sunpower Corporation from 2011 to 2019. Click the link in the email we sent to to verify your email address and activate your job alert. How do we really put the tools in place for consumers to act if it and at the end of the day, if its really about how easy do we make things like solar, storage and EV charging? Would you think that, that you kind of a check first? I would now like to shift to the performance of our individual business segments. Individual salaries will, of course, vary depending on the job, department, location, as well as the individual skills and education of each employee. Ensure accurate and on-time output to Payroll. Please turn to Slide 10. I think its a terrific question. I think what doesnt get as much attention for you guys, even though its becoming a much bigger business and has a big pipeline here, is the sort of commercial battery side of the business. Thanks for taking my questions. We are working on some interesting things, and cant wait to talk to you more about that in future calls. You can save your resume and apply to jobs in minutes on LinkedIn. Based on the company location, we can see that the HQ office of Sunpower Corporation Syst is in ONTARIO, CA. And therefore, the PUC is unlikely to honor that part of the request from the IOUs. We are managing this very, very closely with multiple suppliers. This page reports the average proffered salary of labor condition applications for H-1B Visa and labor certifications for green card filed by Sunpower Corporation since 2001. I am going to turn it over to Eric for a little bit more detail on how we are thinking about it. Sorry about that. Residential gross margin per watt was $0.65 per watt driven by improving mix towards full systems and lower cost of capital. Stay up to date with industry news, benchmarks, and studies. Finally, our business units generated cash in a seasonally weak first quarter and our net debt is down 50% from prior year. We expect to drop down our first set of commercial portfolios in second quarter.
Our residential and light commercial segment continued to outperform as momentum builds in this business. This is my first earnings call here at SunPower, and Id like to say that I am thrilled to be part of the SunPower team. And I would also like to reiterate, regardless of that, as Manu indicated, we still are highly confident in meeting our overall RLC margin and profit targets for the year. We expect this trend to continue as overall residential bookings rose more than 30% year-over-year as we are benefiting from strong demand and positive industry tailwinds. We are pleased with our financial performance for the first quarter, where we significantly improved our EBITDA compared to first quarter 2020 and are executing on our balance sheet improvements ahead of plan. Thank you. Peter, maybe just given your background and taking over Amazon, Discovery, how do you think that matches up with SunPower? The biggest opportunity for SunPower is the benefit of a long-term ITC extension, which we see as a strong catalyst in driving continued cash and loan demand. Norm, is there anything else you want to add color commentary on that piece? Norm, do you want comment more specifically on Brians question about how we are managing the SunVault product? Storage, were seeing actually has a significant effective improvement in customer acquisition costs. We also saw solid year-over-year growth in residential value creation as this metric rose to $0.41 from $0.25 in the first quarter of last year. So see general positive movement there. Is this happening to you frequently? New home sales also performed well as year-over-year megawatts grew 50%, with record bookings resulting in a current backlog of more than 200 megawatts, which now includes our multi-family homes initiatives. I will pass it on. Welcome on board, Peter. And that will show up in improving revenue throughout the year and as we go into 2022. Year-on-year, those tailwinds in sustainable margin improvements, they continue. And we have been able to, because the strength of the business, both sustained gross strong gross margins and we expect to do that throughout the remainder of the year.
On questions, I guess the first one, just housekeeping, the lead time issues in battery storage, are they leading to a change here in the guidance? Right. And that became its own positive flywheel of growth over time. And as we look forward, they are going to remain at the center of the strategy as we look forward to the future growth over the next couple of decades. Sorry the Slide 12 about the Biden plan and sort of policy catalysts. Thank you. And do you see any changes in the current model? I will now turn the call over to Mr. Bob Okunski. Brian, the way to think about it is the Helix storage efforts of the commercial business showing up in improving margins. I would imagine the approach would be different for each one of that market? We have also made the decision to build out our residential loan servicing capabilities as this is a natural extension of our already successful residential lease servicing organization and will contribute to further improving our margins on our loan products and drive an increase in long-term customer value. And were going to make him proud as Chairman by building upon that and marching forward in a very positive way. So thanks again, terrific performance in Q1. If you have an ad-blocker enabled you may be blocked from proceeding. Educate stakeholders on the compensation philosophy of SunPower. Please go ahead, sir. Yes. During todays call, we will make forward-looking statements that are subject to various risks and uncertainties that are described in the Safe Harbor slide of todays presentation, todays earnings press release, our 2020 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Is there going to be like an immediate drop-down of assets into that JV or how would that work? Please turn to Slide 11. Thank you for participating. I would now like to discuss one of our key strategic initiatives to expand our addressable market for the long tail by leveraging our robust financing platform. Residential saw a strong bookings growth of 25% in the first quarter on continued strong demand, with CNS Solutions bookings growing 50% year-over-year. Commercial demand remained healthy as well as megawatts deployed rose more than 30% versus last year and we had an exceptionally strong bookings quarter.
Its early days, but there is 3 areas in particular that I think we can look forward to building with this technology expertise we have. So the percentage of the cost is actually going down quite a bit. Got it. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Ben Kallo with Baird. Before I turn it over to Manu to talk more about that, I think one of the big advantages, I feel like we have in our residential business is that our strategy on financing starts with the customer and work backwards. Is this a new business completely or is this more like a coupon clipping or fee-based business? Yes. We also see two distinct parts to how we approach our commercial business, origination and development and leveraging our storage and services platform. I dont there is been any surprises in how things have evolved and sort of the predictable opening salvo from the IOUs. We are also best positioned for the education sector mandate as we remain the market leader in this space, also with more than 150 megawatts installed across close to 40 school districts. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Peter Faricy, CEO of SunPower. As you know, Ill be staying as Chairman of the Board for 6 months. And my second question is, we have heard lots about supply constraints have been across the board. And one of the things that we did at Amazon is we invested heavily in the technology and tools. And we look forward to talking to you about Q2. Finally, I would like to thank Tom Werner for his passion and commitment to SunPower over the last 18 years. Hi. Peter comes to us with significant background, creating exceptional customer experiences in rapid growth environment at both Amazon and Discovery. As we alluded to, we did receive some feedback from dealers and partners saying that they like to see some improvements in those areas. Is it the largest dealers, long-term residential, commercial? Growth of renewable energy in the end will be driven by making solar easy, reliable and affordable. Hey guys, good morning. Just a little, Peter. Phil, Ill mention one more quick thing, when I led the marketplace business at Amazon, we worked with third-party merchants to help them sell their products on the Amazon platform. And its as I take a look at the experience today in the solar world, I do see a lot of apps that look pretty and provide some interesting information. So as we look behind us, the dealers have been a big part of our strategy. And just from a financial perspective. Two, how can we develop new innovations for consumers that help them take advantage of all the things that renewable energy and storage and beyond offer. Given his hard work and tireless dedication, SunPower now has a strong foundation for future growth as evidenced by our first quarter results and is well-positioned to continue to change how the world is powered. What are the differences?
Please turn to Slide 4. So, any kind of quantification you can provide on sort of the revenue potential in 2021 for your sort of non-resi battery side of the business.
And you mentioned the opportunity to improve the customer acquisition cost. One of the big blessings for me coming into this role is to see that we have the highest quality dealer network in the world, period. Got it. Do you want to change the world? And then maybe one last one, probably for Peter, Id hate to put you on the spot, but you had the Slide 13. Finally, we are increasing our investment in Helix Storage Software to bring more capabilities to our front-of-the-meter storage offering. Let me take that piece. You can unsubscribe from these emails at any time. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Manu Sial, CFO of SunPower. However, installation lead times have been longer than expected due in part to efforts to improve our installed firmware and the commissioning customer experience. As we discussed last quarter, we see significant growth opportunity to drive long-term growth through the expansion of our addressable market. The storage attach rates are up of 30% as weve talked about. No, happy to. For origination and development, we have four key areas of focus: first, continuing to expand our origination pipeline as demand for our industry leading Helix Solutions continue to grow. Thanks everyone. Our market share remains above 50%. One is, of course, the ability to support your growth.
Please turn to Slide 9, where we have provided our consolidated financial results and select metrics. We have, therefore, made the decision to increase our investment in digital and products for key TAM expansion initiatives like front of the meter storage that will improve the long-term value creation for SunPower, while still maintaining our 2021 forecast. Here are some other companies that are located close to Sunpower Corporation Syst. While I have only been on board for a few weeks, I am very impressed with what Ive seen so far. Excellent written, verbal, and interpersonal skills. But yes, its been an honor working with you and best of luck, Tom, in your future endeavors. I believe we can accomplish amazing things going forward. Thanks. So we do not have residential leases on our balance sheet. Manager, Compensation at SunPower Corporation. I apologize. Finally, we are working on several new product features for the second half of the year, including the ability to combine multiple SunVaults for larger system sizes as well as expanding compatibility with legacy inverters for our standalone storage efforts. Ability to navigate through ambiguity. In the same location, we have also posted a supplemental datasheet detailing additional historical metrics. Specifically, we saw continued strong residential customer growth as we added 12,000 customers, bringing our installed base to almost 365,000 as well as seeing solid CIS execution. For fiscal year 2021, our guidance remains unchanged with 2021 GAAP revenue growth of approximately 35%, megawatts recognized growth of approximately 25% and our adjusted EBITDA guidance remains unchanged. Tom? So were going to continue to work and build the tools and technology that will allow them to be most successful at doing those two things. One is through our terrific partnerships with both Maxeon and Enphase, we have been pleased that we have been able to continue to serve customer demand, and we feel really comfortable with those partnerships being able to do that this year. Thats great. Could you just repeat that question again? Specifically, we expect second quarter GAAP revenue of between $295 million to $345 million, GAAP net loss of between $12 million to $1 million and megawatts recognition of between 120 megawatts to 150 megawatts. We now have more than 20 megawatt hours of front-of-the-meter projects under contract with more than 400 megawatt hours in our pipeline. And then just kind of to touch upon the digital transformation item. Is that going to be just the largest dealers you go towards long tail residential or commercial as youre kind of trying to address each one? Here's what people are saying about Sunpower Corporation Syst. Value creation is defined as adjusted EBITDA of our residential and commercial business units, excluding any products and digital investment plus SunPowers share of net retained value. Experience with complex and global organizations. So expect TAM to increase that could also improve deal velocity that could put a little less constraint on tax equity providers. While both offer significant opportunities ultimately, over time, we expect storage and services to become a much greater focus of our CIS business. Ensure compliance with legal requirements and corporate governance. Sales compensation design, implementation, and execution are a significant plus. One is we are very pleased with the reaction so far from our dealers. My first one is just on the mechanics with SunStrong, if they are now going to be including commercial. No data is available based on your input. We continue to see strong industry and policy tailwinds as well as increasing demand for our residential and commercial storage solutions, which will drive expected adjusted EBITDA growth of greater than 40% in 2022. Be the first to submit Sunpower Corporation Syst reviews. Finally, to enhance this call, we have also posted a set of PowerPoint slides, which we will reference during the call on the Events and Presentations page of our Investor Relations website. 