Chinese solar projects developer ReneSola Ltd (NYSE:SOL) today posted a first-quarter (Q1) revenue that reached the upper end of its previously revised guidance and turned to a profit from a loss a year earlier.
ReneSola swung to a profit of USD 5.4 million (EUR 4.7m) from a USD-3.2-million loss a year ago. The bottom line also improved in quarter-on-quarter terms, with profit growing from USD 1.7 million in the final quarter of 2017.
First-quarter revenue surged to USD 44.8 million from USD 238,000, but decreased from USD 64.8 million in the fourth quarter of 2017. The Project Development business contributed USD 31.8 million to the total, while the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) arm added UD 8.7 million. Revenue from the sale of electricity was USD 4.2 million.
"First quarter revenue exceeded our expectations and operating margin expanded significantly from the fourth quarter of 2017, resulting in a sequential increase in net income of over 200%," commented Xianshou Li, ReneSola's CEO.
Gross margin rose to 18.7% from 10.5% in Q4 2017, mainly because of the improved margin from overseas project development and the EPC business in China.
For the second quarter, the project business is seen to generate revenue ranging from USD 20 million to USD 30 million, and an overall gross margin of between 20% and 25%. For the full year, ReneSola expects a revenue of USD 130 million to USD 140 million, with an overall gross margin in the range of 20% to 25%.
In January-March 2018, ReneSola installed 6.3 MW of rooftop arrays in China and a 6.8-MW ground-mounted plant in the US state of North Carolina. Also today, the company announced it has closed the sale of the particular US asset to New York-based Greenbacker Renewable Energy Company LLC.
ReneSola currently owns more than 193 MW of operating rooftop arrays in China, mostly located in a handful of eastern provinces, and close to 20 MW of operating plants in Romania and the UK. As of end-March 2018, it had over 27 MW of rooftop systems under construction. It also has 10.4 MW of completed projects in Turkey that are in the process of being sold.
As for ReneSola’s pipeline, the firm had over 1.1 GW of projects in various stages as at the end of March. This includes 748 MW of late-stage schemes.
The company expects to connect between 15 MW and 20 MW of distributed generation (DG) systems in China during the second quarter, and a total of 100 MW to 150 MW during the whole 2018. Between 80 MW and 100 MW are to be sold in international markets this year.
(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.864)
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Solar modules. Author: Oregon Department of Transportation. License: Creative Commons, Attribution 2.0 Generic.
