The largest provider of residential solar and battery subscriptions in the U.S. saw a year-over-year decline in subscriber additions and installation volumes in the fourth quarter of 2025.
In an earnings report and investor update released Thursday, Sunrun said its closely watched “subscriber value” metrics also fell last quarter. Gross subscriber value came in at $50,165, a 2% decline from the fourth quarter of 2024. Net subscriber value was $9,098 in Q4, a 30% drop from the year-ago period. Acquisition costs per subscriber in Q4 rose 8% year over year.
In a statement, Sunrun Chief Financial Officer Danny Abajian emphasized sunnier metrics that he said gave Sunrun momentum heading into 2026. The company’s cash generation in 2025 exceeded the “midpoint” of its previous investor guidance as “upfront net subscriber value” margins increased, he said.
“We … are on track for another strong year in 2026,” Abajian said.
Investors appeared skeptical, however. Sunrun’s stock fell over 35% in Friday trading, wiping out about half its gains since the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer.
Though it’s seen as broadly negative for renewables, the OBBBA extended favorable tax treatment for the “third-party owned” home solar systems that constitute most of Sunrun’s order book. That led many industry analysts to conclude that Sunrun would fare better than competitors that specialize in customer-owned systems.
Sunrun said in its November investor update that it expected “positive volume growth and margin expansion” in 2026. But Sunrun CEO Mary Powell declined to share guidance on 2026 order volumes at the time, telling an analyst on the company’s Nov. 6 earnings call that Sunrun was more focused on customer quality than quantity as it works to build what it calls “the nation’s largest distributed power plant.”
Sunrun has 4 GWh of networked battery capacity and more than 106,000 customers enrolled in 18 utility “home-to-grid” programs that delivered 425 MW of power during dispatches in 2025, according to its Thursday investor update. The company added 1.5 GWh of “dispatchable generation capabilities” last year as its storage attachment rate rose to 71%, Powell said on Thursday.
But Sunrun now expects “slight declines in overall volumes” in 2026, Powell said.
The downshift in Sunrun’s near-term outlook is due to the company’s recent decision to reduce its reliance on affiliate channels, which account for about one-third of Sunrun’s volume, Powell said. The company expects affiliate volumes to decline “over 40%” this year as Sunrun’s direct business sees “high single-digit to low double-digit growth,” she said.
Powell attributed the decision to reduce affiliate exposure to “the increasing complexity of sales processes, utility rate structures, storage integration, distributed power plants, and [investment tax credit] compliance,” which she said “very few industry participants are able to execute in this landscape to our standards.”
Falling subscriber value and a new joint venture
Sunrun cited reduced affiliate exposure as a factor in its forecast for lower aggregate subscriber value in 2026.
“Budget bill and tariff uncertainty” likewise led Sunrun to reduce direct sales activity “in certain routes and geographies,” lowering volumes in the second half of 2025 and early 2026 as the company focused on higher-margin opportunities, Abajian said. But with “resolution of some of those uncertainties,” Sunrun is again expanding sales activity and expects progressively stronger volumes through 2026, he added.
Abajian said a recently-announced joint venture with Hannon Armstrong Sustainable Infrastructure Capital could eventually finance upwards of 300 MW of additional capacity at more than 40,000 U.S. homes. Sunrun could pursue similar partnerships in the future as it looks to diversify its financing sources and improve efficiency, he said.
