Question-and-Answer Session
[Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Vishal Shah from Lehman Brothers.
Vishal Shah - Lehman Brothers
Yeah, thank you very much. Congratulations on a great quarter. Can you please talk about some of the potential factors involved in your decision to expand manufacturing beyond your four factories in Malaysia and I have a follow-up after that.
Michael J. Ahearn - Chief Executive Officer and Chairman
Yeah. Thanks, Vishal. Well, I think basically we're looking at production volumes in relation to market demand and of course what we're seeing is that we've been able to increase the throughput on our existing production lines, more significantly and faster than initially conceived. And bring up the new lines at a faster rate. So, we've got a lot more volume flowing through now that's basically alleviated some short-term need to build more factories.
At the same time, we've got an ongoing effort to identify sites and work through qualification and planning issues. We don't have a set timeframe but we continue to look at market demand in relation to existing production throughput gains and try to balance all the considerations, so we don't have anything to announce today but we're constantly evaluating that.
Vishal Shah - Lehman Brothers
Thank you. And just on the US market, based on your experience so far, how do you see the market developing? What kind of model do you think works best? And how much dependent is it on the ITC?
Michael J. Ahearn - Chief Executive Officer and Chairman
Well, our focus of course is right now on utilities in the US that are under renewable portfolio standard obligations. I think there's a couple of ? there are several potential models here that could make sense. One is what we're calling the IPP model, build, own and operate solar generation plant. So the output under a long-term power purchase agreement or some combination of that and a spot market offering to a regulated entity under an obligation. That's one model.
There's another one where you build, own ? build and deliver a turnkey system to a regulated utility that then owns it and puts it in its rate base.
There's probably a third channel to market where you're providing a turnkey system or some element of that to an unregulated affiliate of a diversified energy company and I think any of these models could make sense, depending on given geographic market or utility situation and depending to some extent on how the investment tax credit is structured going forward.
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