Canadian Solar Inc (NASDAQ:CSIQ) missed its own second-quarter (Q2) revenue guidance on Tuesday, when it posted a top line of USD 650.6 million (EUR 571m).
The company, which operates as a photovoltaic (PV) module manufacturer and solar project developer, previously guided for a second-quarter net revenue in the range of USD 690 million-730 million. The actual figure was the above-mentioned USD 650.6 million, which was down 54.3% from USD 1.42 billion in the first quarter of 2018 and 6% from USD 692.4 million in Q2 2017. Canadian Solar blamed the sequential decline on lower revenue from project sales, lower average selling prices (ASPs) for its PV modules and the deferral of several planned project sales to later quarters.
In January-June 2018, the firm recorded solar module shipments of 1,700 MW, including 246 MW that were shipped to its own projects. This exceeded Canadian Solar’s Q2 shipments guidance of 1,500 MW-1,600 MW and compares to 1,374 MW shipped in the first quarter of 2018.
Shawn Qu, chairman and CEO of Canadian Solar, noted that the recent solar policy change in China had caused a substantial disruption in the domestic market and the global solar industry as a whole, but expressed confidence that the company can “navigate this challenging period”.
The table below gives more details about the company’s financial performance in Q2 2018.
| Figures in USD (unless otherwise noted) |
Q2 2018 |
Q2 2017 |
Q1 2018 |
| Net revenue |
650.6m |
692.4m |
1.42bn |
| Income from operations |
53.9m |
83.7m |
78.2m |
| Gross margin (%) |
24.5 |
24.2 |
10.1 |
| Net profit attributable to Canadian Solar |
15.6m |
38.2m |
43.4m |
As of July 31, 2018, the company had 1.4 GWp of operating solar power plants and a late-stage, utility-scale solar power project pipeline of 2.2 GWp.
When it comes to solar module production, on the same date the company had the capacity to manufacture 1,645 MW of ingots, 5,000 MW of wafers, 5,450 MW of cells and 8,310 MW of modules. Because its factories in Canada and Brazil are running at a low utilisation rate, the company estimates its effective solar module production capacity at 7,550 MW. It anticipates to increase its ingot, wafer, cell and module manufacturing capacity to 1.65 GW, 5 GW, 6.25 GW and 9.13 GW, respectively, by the end of the year. This marks a downward revision of the initial plan, which envisaged growing ingot, cell and module manufacturing capacity by a further 355 MW, 800 MW and 780 MW, respectively.
(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.878)
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Author: Ken Teegardin. Licence: Creative Commons, Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.
