Leading PV manufacturer Yingli Green Energy reported its third quarter earnings Tuesday, and while it reported solid revenue for the quarter, fourth-quarter and full-year guidance for module shipments show a much poorer picture.
Yingli Green reported revenue for the third quarter of $551.5 million, up slightly on the previous quarter’s $549.5 million, leading to these comments from Liansheng Miao, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Yingli Green Energy:
I’m very pleased to report that we delivered another set of solid results in the third quarter of 2014 with a gross margin of 20.9%, well ahead of our previous guidance, and a strong PV module shipment of 903 MW.
However, despite the power of positive thinking, looking forward to the fourth quarter and full-year shipment figures, we see a drastic cut to previous guidance.
The company shipped 903.4 MW worth of PV module shipments in the third quarter, including 109 MW worth to its own downstream power plants in China. Third quarter figures were up on second quarter numbers, which were a slightly lower 887.9 MW.
In guidance for the fiscal year 2014, Yingli Green again revised down its PV module shipment target to sit in the range of 3.3 GW to 3.35 GW, which is only a 3–4.6% increase on 2013. Original guidance provided at the top of the year was 4.0 to 4.2 GW, and revised guidance in the second quarter was 3.6 to 3.8 GW.
“In order to seek a balance between our shipment volume and profitability, we decide to revise our shipment guidance for full year of 2014 to 3.3-3.35 GW,” said Liansheng Miao.
Yingli Green were careful to highlight the genuinely remarkable nature of its global reach, which included extending its revenue from Rest of World countries (those markets excluding Europe, the US, Japan, and China).
Obviously, China remains a big part of Yingli Green’s business, thanks in part to its own downstream business. Yingli Green currently has a pipeline of approximately 1.4 GW of PV projects at different states of approval across the various provinces of China, and plans to construct approximately 400 MW worth of projects on its own or with partners by the end of 2014.
“Despite the slower than expected development of downstream projects in the first half of 2014, we are progressing well in the downstream in the second half of 2014,” Liansheng Miao added.
“In the third quarter, we began to construct 185 MW of downstream projects, bringing our projects under construction to a total of 340 MW, with internal shipments to these projects having reached to 187 MW. In the fourth quarter, we expect to start the construction of 50 to 60 MW of downstream projects in total. Thus we expect to develop approximately 400 MW of downstream projects by ourselves or together with our partners by the end of 2014.”
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