Chinese PV quintet: Canadian Solar, Sunergy, Solarfun, Suntech, Trina sing song of stellar shipments

Five of the leading Chinese crystalline-silicon solar cell and module manufacturers announced their quarterly financial results this week, and in a word, they were stellar, consistently beating market analysts’ estimates. Canadian Solar, China Sunergy, Solarfun, Suntech and Trina Solar all saw their shipments of photovoltaic cells and modules jump way up, in some cases even double, and as a result, sequential revenues also increased significantly.

The companies see the growth trend continuing, into the fourth quarter and beyond, suggesting that 2010 will be a boom year—and pushing the Chinese group to continue or even accelerate their capacity expansion plans, as they increase the efficiencies and power of their products and bring down nonsilicon manufacturing costs.

The most prodigious gainer in the quarter was Canadian Solar, followed by Trina Solar and Suntech. The not-very-Canadian company more than doubled its shipments, pushing past the century mark for the first time, and increased its revenues dramatically as well. (See table below.) Trina grew the amount of its megawattage going out the door by nearly 92%, while Suntech’s popped out 67%, getting well past 200MW. All five companies expect the good times to keep rolling, shipment-wise, in the fourth quarter and to beat (pummel?) previous guidance expectations once the yearly figures come in.

The combined annual shipment number just for these five companies should blow past 1.8GW (that’s cells and modules combined, depending on the company), if their current guesstimates are correct—a number that few industry weathercasters would have forecast just six months ago. In fact, it’s evident the change in market conditions even took the five firms by surprise.

The quintet believes shipments will continue in a brisk fashion in 2010, at least for the first half of the year.

Based on comments in their conference calls, while China Sunergy and Solarfun are either unwilling or unable to offer any visibility on what they expect to ship next year, the other three have no such hesitation. Canadian Solar sees its business doubling again, expecting to sell 600-700MW of goods, while Suntech thinks it will experience at least 75% growth in shipments, and Trina forecasts something in the neighborhood of 350MW—in the first half of the year.

The same three also plan to spend a fair amount of Yuan on capital expenditures in 2010 (although the two, more reticent outfits haven’t nailed down their own capex numbers yet). Suntech and Trina both say they will spend $200 million, while one of Canadian’s execs put their figure at $135 million to $140 million during his company’s call.

With the capex monies flowing, where do the formidable five hope to land in terms of production capacity? By the end of this year, the Chinese Canadians plan to hit 420MW and 820MW in cell and module manufacturing, respectively, with those numbers growing to 700MW and 1GW by spring of 2010. Suntech, now around 1GW in capacity, said it will reach 1.4GW by middle of next year, with 450MW of the cell lines equipped with its high-efficiency Pluto technology.

Trina expects to reach 600MW by year’s end, and get to between 850 and 950MW once 2010 comes to a close. Sunergy, currently at 320 and pretty much running at full utilization, has made no concrete announcements, while Solarfun wants to grow from 510MW to 700MW in the next year.

In round numbers, that puts the furious five’s high-end projected capacity (admittedly a mix of cell and module estimates) over 4.3GW, without Sunergy adding a watt.

The five companies largely claim to have trimmed nonsilicon manufacturing costs (and benefitted from cheaper polysilicon and wafer prices) while improving conversion efficiencies. Trina (which says that multicrystalline will account for 70% of its production this year) brought its nonsilicon number down to 82 cents, while Sunergy (which claims it has improved throughput, yields, and efficiencies in its factories) cut its blended wafer costs down from 96 cents to 87 cents during the quarter.

Sunergy also boasts of 19%+ cell efficiency test results from Fraunhofer ISE, both on new N- and P-type devices, while Canadian is converting the first production line over to its enhanced selective emitter cell scheme, which has achieved efficiencies of 18.5% on monocrystalline and 17% on multicrystalline. The company expects to ship its first 260W modules strung with the higher-end cells in early 2010.

Downturn, what downturn? The somber days seem to be over, at least on the basis of the past few months’ results of these and other leading Chinese companies. Whether it’s spot-market fever, lower ASPs for modules, a still-voracious German appetite, or other regions heating up (including the Chinese domestic sector), these latest numbers prove the solar PV manufacturing sector recovery is on—for now.

>

	Canadian Solar	China Sunergy	Solarfun	Suntech	Trina Solar	Totals
3Q09 shipments (MW)	102.6 (+113%, Q2Q)	54.4 (+31.1%)	102.6 (+59.6%)	213 (+67%)	122.6 (+91.9%)	595.2MW
4Q est. shipments (MW)	128-138	70-80	~110	~234	145-165	687-727+
2009 est. shipments (MW)	295-305	190-200	>300	640-660	380-400	1805-1865+
Revenues (US$)	213.1M (+87%, Q2Q)	80.1M (+14.3%)	144.6M (+15.5%)	473.1M (+47.4%)	249.7M (+66.5%)	$1.160B