Hanwha Q Cells Revenues Soars In Q2, But Shipping Numbers Go Unannounced
Korean solar PV manufacturer Hanwha Q Cells posted an impressive second quarter net revenue and profit, but managed to confuse analysts and experts by refusing to release its shipment numbers.
Hanwha Q Cells published its second quarter earnings this week, scheduling its earnings call with investors and analysts at the same time as Trina Solar and Yingli Solar. The South Korean manufacturer reported net revenues of $638 million for the quarter — an impressive jump on the $514.9 million taken during the first quarter of 2016, and a whopping increase on the $338 million taken in during the second quarter of 2015.
Gross profit for the quarter was up as well, reaching $151.2 million for the quarter, up from $109 million in Q1’16 and $58.4 million in Q2’15. Earnings per share were $0.92, compared with earnings per fully diluted ADS of $0.33 in the first quarter of 2016 and a net loss per fully diluted ADS of $0.17 in the second quarter of 2015.
“We are pleased to report a solid quarterly execution which exceeded our financial targets driven by disciplined, yet flexible global operations, while adopting into continuously changing market environments cost effectively,” said Mr. Seong-woo Nam, Chairman and CEO of Hanwha Q CELLS. “We continue to improve our financial positions and cash management to support our growing business rationally. This year we are maintaining net debt to equity ratio below 250% level and our cash conversion cycle has fallen below 60 days compared with over 100 days a year ago.”
However, in an odd move, Hanwha Q Cells refused to publish its shipping figures, as it has done previously, and as every competitor does each quarter.
Mark Osborne, Senior News Editor at PV-Tech, and one of the industry’s most respected analysts, was similarly confused:
“Having already skimmed the financial press release ahead of the call there were several big issues that Hanwha Q CELLS management needed to address and they had not addressed these in the prepared remarks section of the call. So when the Q&A section did not take place, the alarm bells were raised.
“Making matters worse was that the fact that the company did not release presentation slides with the earnings call, something not all companies do but certainly Hanwha Q CELLS had been doing for a long time.”
For his full analysis of the mystery shipping numbers, the reasons behind it, and his conclusions, read his full article here.
Hanwha Q Cells nevertheless was upbeat about its quarter, and the rest of 2016. The company apparently has annualized production capacities of 1,500 MW for ingots, 900 MW for wafers, 4,000 MW for cells, and 4,000 MW for modules. The company is further looking forward to shipping a total of between 4,800 MW to 5,000 MW in the full year 2016 — one shipping number it was willing to part with.
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