JA Solar Sees Shipments And Earnings Jump In Second Quarter

Chinese solar cell and module manufacturer, JA Solar, saw improvements across the board in its second quarter.

According to second quarter results released by JA Solar on Tuesday, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of solar products is back on track, thanks to increasingly strong demand in China. News of the earnings subsequently caused the company’s shares to jump at the beginning of trading on Tuesday, but they have since stabilized only slightly higher than where they began the week.

Total shipments of product sat at 790.8 MW, an increase of 16% year over year, and 16% over the previous quarter. Net revenue for the company came in at RMB 2.7 billion ($436.8 million), which is an increase of 11.8% year over year, and 12.7% over Q1’15.

“We were pleased to close out the first half of the year with shipments higher than previous expectations due to strong demand in several key markets,” said Mr. Baofang Jin, chairman and CEO of JA Solar. “Solid shipment growth was largely driven by demand in China, which represented 45% of our total shipments during the second quarter. Additionally, we continue to make progress on the establishment of our new cell manufacturing plant in Malaysia.”

Gross profit was up 20.8% year over year and 14.9% over Q1’15, reaching RMB 444.3 million ($71.7 million), with a gross margin of 16.4%, thanks primarily to a higher percentage of revenue from the company’s downstream projects, as well as continued cost reduction.

“As we continue into the second half of the year, we expect industry demand to remain relatively strong, especially in China,” Mr Baofang Jin continued. “We are focused on capturing greater market share in emerging markets, particularly in India and the Americas. Our growing market share and continued development of our downstream project portfolio, supported by the expansion of our manufacturing capacity, will be our key growth drivers for the next several quarters.”

JA Solar is expecting total cell and module shipments for the third quarter of 2015 to be in the range of 900 MW to 950 MW, and intends to ship 150 MW worth of modules to its own downstream projects for the full year 2015.