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SFCE 4/6
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BRIEF-Xian Longi Silicon Materials' unit in solar cell deal
Jun 4, 2015 | Reuters
Xian Longi Silicon Materials Corp * Says unit in deal to sell solar cells to Wuxi Suntech Power for at least 270 million yuan ($43.54 million) -
Is 2015 the year of reckoning for Yingli Green?
Jun 4, 2015 | PV Tech
By Mark Osborne
...Since 2007 when the industry really started to breakout of being a cottage industry and scale production, Sharp began a slow fall from the top, Suntech and First Solar both had short stays at the top and more recently, Yingli Green. After two years as the leading PV manufacturer, measured by module shipments, the company lost the top spot to Trina Solar in 2014... -
EU-China solar trade war breaks out again
Jun 4, 2015 | Recharge Magazine
By Bernd Radowitz in Berlin and Brian Publicover
...Germany’s SAG Solarstrom was snapped up China’s Shunfeng last year, while its larger compatriot Juwi only survived because it was bought by regional utility MVV...
Industry News
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BRIEF-Xian Longi Silicon Materials' unit in solar cell deal
Jun 4, 2015 | Reuters
Xian Longi Silicon Materials Corp
* Says unit in deal to sell solar cells to Wuxi Suntech Power for at least 270 million yuan ($43.54 million)
Source text in Chinese: bit.ly/1H3FAgn
Further company coverage: ($1 = 6.2006 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Hong Kong and Singapore newsrooms)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/04/idUSL3N0YQ3SQ20150604
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Is 2015 the year of reckoning for Yingli Green?
Jun 4, 2015 | PV Tech
By Mark Osborne
Recent history has not been kind to PV manufacturers that climb the rankings chart to become the global leader. Since 2007 when the industry really started to breakout of being a cottage industry and scale production, Sharp began a slow fall from the top, Suntech and First Solar both had short stays at the top and more recently, Yingli Green. After two years as the leading PV manufacturer, measured by module shipments, the company lost the top spot to Trina Solar in 2014.
That was not the plan Yingli Green set itself at the beginning of 2014. It had lost over US$1.2 billion in the last three years getting and maintaining its position at the top and with continued rising demand, initially guided shipments of 3.6GW to 3.8GW, indicating an annual growth rate of between 15% to 20%, in line with overall global market growth projections.
However, Trina Solar had guided exactly the same figures that would have correlated to growth of 40% to 42%, outstripping global market growth projections.
It became very clear, very quickly that Trina Solar’s momentum was stronger than that of Yingli Green’s, though the shipment battle was close throughout the year, Yingli Green effectively put the brakes on market share gains at any cost in the third quarter.
The company lowered shipment guidance to 3.3GW to 3.35GW, effectively giving the crown to Trina Solar, even though Trina Solar also lowered it guidance to 3.61GW to 3.66GW
When full-year shipment figures were revealed, Trina Solar had shipped 3.66GW in 2014, while Yingli Green had shipped 3.36GW.
Looking at the shipment guidance figures of the top five companies for 2015 indicates that two other companies could push past Yingli Green, dropping the company to fourth position in the rankings.
Rather than a fight back from Yingli Green, momentum at Trina Solar, Canadian Solar and JA Solar from 2014 looks ominous.
Looking at actual first quarter shipments from the top five companies based on full-year shipment guidance would seem to confirm the trend. Granted, we have taken shipment guidance figures of Yingli Green for the first quarter (700MW to 750MW) but the company is expected to release results tomorrow (June 7). We will update the chart relating to this after the company release.
However, from first quarter shipment figures, Canadian Solar is soaring, having been the only company to actually exceed shipment guidance in the quarter and also topped the shipment rankings.
Canadian Solar reported shipments of 1.23GW, while Trina Solar reported 1.02GW of shipments in the first quarter.
As a result, Canadian Solar exceeded its average quarterly shipment requirement (1GW) to meet the low-end of its annual guidance, while Trina Solar just missed its figure (1.1GW) by a whisker.
In contrast, Yingli Green would need to hit 900MW of shipments on a quarterly average basis and already is guiding well below that run-rate.
Of course this is simply the math talking as shipment momentum typically builds through the year, although in recent years, strong growth markets such as Japan and the UK have meant that total first quarter shipments are not as markedly down as other quarters, especially when Germany dominated the market.
Unless Yingli Green surprises in reporting higher shipment figures than guided, first quarter shipments of the top five companies highlight that Yingli Green and JA Solar have already come under pressure to build shipment momentum in subsequent quarters.
With many of the top 10 ranked companies in 2014 actually lowering shipment forecasts when issuing third quarter financial results last year, the threat to those guided shipments comes sooner than many realise.
Therefore strong shipment guidance from the likes of Yingli Green for the second quarter is required. However, JA Solar guided total cell and module shipments in the second quarter were expected to be in the range of 680MW to 720MW, indicating execution in the second half of the year would need to exceed the average quarterly shipment requirements to meet the low-end of annual shipment guidance, which the company did not revise.
In contrast, Trina Solar guided second quarter shipments to be between 1.1GW to 1.14GW, well in line with the average quarterly shipment requirements to meet the low-end of annual guidance.
The other company to keep a close eye on in 2015 is Canadian Solar, which is tracking Trina Solar as closely as Trina Solar did Yingli Green in 2014.
It is interesting to note that Canadian Solar guided second quarter shipments to be in the range of 950MW to 1000MW, again closely tracking the average quarterly shipment requirements to meet the low-end of annual guidance.
Canadian Solar also has the advantage over its closest rivals of having a shipment figure advantage from exceeding its average quarterly shipment requirements needed to meet full-year guidance. Is the US Yingli’s Achilles heel?
Yingli Green’s shipments from 2013 through 2014 were basically flat and therefore lost overall market share to its main rivals.
There is no question that end markets continued to diversify in 2014, yet the key markets remained as they were in 2013. China, Japan and the US were the biggest country markets over the last two years and are projected to be the same in 2015.
To be number one or a major top five industry player having a strong market presence in the top three markets is not a bad idea.
Yingli Green has been strong in all three markets in the past and clearly has been strong in China and Japan last year as the regional chart on the left shows.
However, it would seem that the US market is proving Yingli Green’s Achilles heel, not surprisingly perhaps due to anti-dumping duties imposed last year.
Management touted in its last conference call that it had achieved eight straight quarters of shipments to the US above 100MW.
However, excluding 260MW of module shipments to its downstream business last year, the chart provides a shipment figure of around 496MW to the US in 2014. This compares to a shipment of around 652MW in 2013, again excluding shipments of 128MW of Yingli Green’s total shipments for its downstream business that year.
So the eight straight quarters of shipments to the US that were above 100MW may be correct but it disguises that fact that shipments fell significantly year-on-year.
Yingli Green also touted at its analyst day event last year that the US market had grown significantly since 2010, citing independent research data from the likes of GTM Research that the US market had 30% growth rate in 2014 and that the CAGR of the utility PV market increased, 64% and the residential market increase by 46%.
Therefore, Yingli Green’s US market share decline is bigger than the shipment decline would suggest.
Even in 2015 there would seem to be something amiss about Yingli Green’s recent press releases regarding US customer activity.
In May, it announced a new module supply agreement with Borrego Solar, which said that it expected the US installer to use up to 40MW of its modules in 2015.
PV Tech data indicates that in 2010, Yingli Green supplied up to 20MW of modules to Borrego Solar, accounting for the majority of the installers 23.7MW of total installations in that year.
Moving to 2015, Borrego Solar confirmed to PV Tech that its installation target this year was around 100MW, indicating that Yingli Green’s share of Borrego Solar’s business has significantly declined.
Only the other day, (June 2), Yingli Green announced that it had renewed its ‘Preferred Supplier’ status with another major US installer, Vivint Solar.
Curiously, no module supply deal quantities were provided in the release, except Robert Petrina, managing director of Yingli Americas stating the following:
"With the US residential solar market poised to reach nearly 3GW by the end of 2016, we are thrilled to expand our partnership with Vivint Solar, one of the nation's top home solar companies.”
With the benefit of Vivint Solar being a publically listed company, SEC filings state that historically, Trina Solar, Yingli Green and Canadian Solar had been the principle module suppliers to the company and that in 2014, Trina Solar and Yingli Green had accounted for the majority of module purchases.
However, Vivint Solar’s approved module suppliers also include SolarWorld, ReneSola, Suniva and Upsolar.
Other historical Vivint Solar data in SEC filings indicates that Yingli Green had been responsible for around 20% of module requirements for the installer with around 40% attributed to Trina Solar.
The impression given by Yingli Green in recent releases and its previous earnings and analyst day events is not in sync with the facts.
Clearly getting any better insight in to it US shipments in the first quarter and possible guidance on US shipments for the year would help clear up the inconsistencies or confirm in contrast to its closest rivals that are making more inroads into the booming US market and could be the key contributor to Yingli Green’s expected market ranking decline in 2015.
Of course one of the key clouds overhanging Yingli Green this year relates to its financial position and ‘going concern’ issues relayed in its recently released annual report for 2014.
Tackling its well-known debt issues, while remaining a leading company may be too much for Yingli Green in 2015 and therefore possibly the year of reckoning.
http://www.pv-tech.org/editors_blog/is_2015_the_year_of_reckoning_for_yingli_green
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EU-China solar trade war breaks out again
Jun 4, 2015 | Recharge Magazine
By Bernd Radowitz in Berlin and Brian Publicover
It was a fitting location for the European PV industry to start a new battle in the global solar trade war.Oliver Schäfer, the president of the influential European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) dropped his bomb at the SNEC solar conference in Shanghai in late April — breaking his organisation’s previous neutrality and calling for an end to the EU’s anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Chinese PV kit and minimum import prices (MIPs).
The aftershock came two days later. At a press conference in Brussels, EU ProSun, a lobby group for Europe’s dwindling number of PV manufacturers, accused China’s PV industry of widespread fraud — bypassing the duties by importing equipment from Malaysia and Taiwan. It then revealed that SolarWorld — the last of Europe’s large panel makers and the driving force behind EU ProSun — had asked the EU to open an anti-circumvention enquiry into the allegations (a request that was subsequently granted).
EU ProSun also called for an extension of the MIPs and countervailing duties beyond their December 2015 expiration date.
The stakes are high. Expiration of the duties could reinvigorate the flagging European PV installation segment, but it could “potentially eliminate all the remaining players [in solar manufacturing] in Europe”, says Mark Barineau, a solar analyst at Lux Research.
“EPIA is taking more of a stance to increase overall installations, as opposed to supporting local manufacturers,” he points out.
At the SNEC conference, Schäfer told journalists: “It is very clear. EPIA wants free and fair trade. We are a global industry. [We want] a level playing field for everybody. We want fair market prices.”
Schäfer later told Recharge that the trade spat is no longer about fairness or unfairness, as prices for PV kit outside the EU are now cheaper.
“I believe we need to step back and say, ‘Okay, the measures were at the time maybe justifiable, but now it looks different’,” he argued. “Look at Turkey — panel prices are 20% cheaper in Turkey than in the EU. And Turkey is not very far away from the EU.”
Many of EPIA’s developer members — who bitterly opposed the tariffs in 2013 — told Schäfer that if panel prices were reduced by only 10%, they could build many more projects than they can today. Several of the developers that had warned of a “market collapse” in 2013 were themselves left struggling. Germany’s SAG Solarstrom was snapped up China’s Shunfeng last year, while its larger compatriot Juwi only survived because it was bought by regional utility MVV.
Installation figures have steadily declined across Europe in recent years, mainly due to shrinking government subsidies — from 22.4GW in 2011 to just 7GW last year, according to EPIA. The International Energy Agency estimates that more than half of the 265,000 full-time solar jobs in 2011 have now gone, the majority in the labour-intensive installation segment. Cheaper PV imports from China would undoubtedly boost the European sector.
It would also be a boon for the Chinese manufacturers, who, unsurprisingly, have called for the EU restrictions to end.
Arturo Herrero, chief strategy officer for JinkoSolar, told Recharge at SNEC that an end to the MIP could help trigger a resurgence in the French, Italian and Spanish PV markets.
“And for JinkoSolar, it will mean we’ll recover a lot of markets and customers that decided not to do business anymore, because the conditions were not competitive.”
Zhiguo Zhu, chief operating officer and president of Trina Solar’s modules division, claimed the EU measures have only served to allow imports from manufacturers producing in South Korea and Malaysia to build market share in Europe at the expense of Chinese companies.
“We want to have fair trade. The duties or tariffs, they’re unfair to us,” he said.
European suppliers to Chinese manufacturers, such as Germany’s Wacker Chemie, which sells the lion’s share of its polysilicon to China, are also fervently lobbying for the duties to end. “Trade barriers against Chinese solar products actually slow down the success of solar power in the EU and make it more expensive — hurting a large portion of Europe’s solar industry along the way,” Wacker Polysilicon president Ewald Schindlbeck tells Recharge.
“Market analysts expect only 1-1.5GW of newly installed PV capacity in Germany [compared to a national target of 2.4-2.6GW], and about 8-9GW in Europe as a whole, for 2015. We therefore demand that the EU and its member states put an end to their punitive actions against Chinese solar modules and cells after December 2015.
“If we instead continue to cling to artificially high prices, we only encourage further delays in the much-needed expansion of photovoltaics, which will create an uncontrollable investment backlog with serious financial risks for society.”
Industry sources tell Recharge that EPIA changed its position on protection measures under pressure from its eight-member board of directors, which now includes only one executive from a solar panel manufacturer, Schäfer himself, who works for US-based SunPower (owned by French oil major Total). Also on the board are executives from Wacker and DuPont (which also sells its solar products to Chinese manufacturers), Trina Solar, and developers Phoenix Solar, Enel Green Power, Solarcentury and Total.
SolarWorld vice-president and chief EU ProSun spokesman Milan Nitzschke lost his seat on the board last year, further highlighting the shift at the association away from European manufacturers.
“As an EPIA member, I am embarrassed,” Nitzschke tellsRecharge. “It used to be an association that spoke out in favour of solar module manufacturers.”
Allowing Chinese “dumping” and “state subsidies” is like allowing doping for cyclists at the Tour de France, he says.
At the Brussels press conference, Nitzschke claimed that up to 30% of Chinese solar imports bypass EU import measures through “fraudulent circumvention”. He also warned that project operators could have their modules seized if they were found to have breached EU trade rules, citing the view of lawyers at Nuremberg-based Rödl & Partner.
In a side aspect of its wider complaint, EU ProSun also told the European Commission (EC) that the Bloomberg index used as a benchmark to set MIPs has been packed with Chinese prices, which at least temporarily lowered the benchmark and thus the MIP. Brussels in early May said it will review its benchmark system to determine if it is still representative of panel prices.
An expiry review of the EC’s Minimum Price Agreement with Chinese producers and anti-dumping duties would take 12-15 months if EU ProSun makes an official request and Brussels accepts it. The lobbying group said it will do so by 7 September. Once the request has been accepted, the measures will automatically be extended at least until the commission rules on it.
According to the SETI Alliance — a Geneva-based group lobbying against trade barriers in clean energy — duties and minimum prices could remain in place throughout 2016 and perhaps a few months into 2017, if the EC opens an expiry review.
“It is unlikely the anti-dumping measure will expire in December due to the requests for an interim review, and anti-circumvention investigation,” says Jodie Roussell, head of public affairs for Europe and North Africa at Chinese PV giant Trina Solar. Roussell, who is an EPIA board member, says that her company has been fully compliant with EU norms of trade and the minimum prices.
A decision about the opening of an anti-circumvention enquiry was expected by the end of May, Nitzschke said, but added that it could be until next year before the EC renders its judgement. If it judges circumvention took place, the EC could extend existing anti-dumping duties to products exported from Taiwan and Malaysia that have been found to consist largely of content from China.
While EU ProSun and SolarWorld may have strong arguments for the extension of the measures, it is also clear that Europe is no longer the key global PV player it once was — as painfully demonstrated by the contracting installation figures and the dwindling number of jobs at installers and developers.
Ray Lian, a former Solarbuzz analyst who recently started working for Hong Kong PV project investor Kong Sun Holdings, thinks it is likely the EU will review the measures and maybe extend them or replace them by a new tariff.
Yet Lian also stresses that module prices are already quite low, and there really isn’t much scope for them to fall further anyway, even if the EU’s minimum prices were abolished.
“Actually it depends on demand in the second half of the year. If demand in China is strong, prices might go up, not down,” he reckons.
Other experts agree.
Eicke Weber, the head of Germany’s renowned Fraunhofer ISE institute, expects that Chinese overcapacities of PV modules are rapidly shrinking due to the current worldwide solar boom.
“If we really will have 55GW of global installations this year and the peak of Chinese capacity is at 60GW, then that’s not very far apart,” he tells Recharge. “I don’t foresee further strong price declines for the next years.”
Weber has mixed feelings about the EU’s measures. On the one hand, he believes that there should be a “level playing field” for manufacturing in Europe and China. But for that to exist, he believes, Europe needs to create an investment climate that once more allows large-scale investments in solar.
http://www.rechargenews.com/solar/1401357/eu-china-solar-trade-war-breaks-out-again
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