There's more to it than that, as well. Comparing the energy used to make the panels vs. the energy delivered and complaining if the latter is less (even if it were, which it isn't) is bogus. The target is to deliver a certain amount of electrical power to a particular site. To make an apples-to-apples comparison you have to compare the energy cost of doing that with solar panels to what it replaces - grid power.
The energy cost of delivering grid power includes cutting trees and processing them into poles. Smelting, forming, manufacturing, and delivering generators, transformers, wires, insulators, electrical boxes, a meter, switches and breakers, etc. Clearing (and using indefinitely) land for the run of poles. Transporting the workers and equipment to and from the construction site and running the equipment while there. And so on.
Then there's the ongoing energy cost of generating and transporting the power to be delivered. You typically start with fuel and burn it in a big stationary heat engine, paying the carnot cycle penalty - plus more because no heat engine is perfect. Then you transport the power, losing it to resistance in the wires, hysteresis and eddy currents in the transformers, corona and insulator arcing, etc.
THAT'S what you have to beat when you consider the energy cost of your solar instalation. Even including the energy that goes into building the inverter and batteries and installing the array it's a slam-dunk.
Can you IMAGINE the same fools who started the "energy breakeven" meme demanding the power grid be shut down because it consumes more energy than it delivers? B-) (I can. They ARE scientifically-illiteratre eco-wackos.)
Now if somebody were silly enough to try to build photovoltaic solar panels using ONLY energy from other photovoltaic solar panels (not even solar concentrators for raw heat but getting that fromn solar-powered resistive heaters), comparing manufacturing energy input to delivered energy would make sense.