Taiwan’s Top Solar Cell Makers Break Out In April

Year-over-year revenue performance for the month of April is still in the negative territory; however, for Motech this figure is only 8.7% below last year

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In our estimates for the fiscal year 2012, we see decreases in revenue and shipments for the majority of companies from Taiwan; however, three top volume sellers are breaking out from the trend with their April figures. Motech has sold NT$1.2B, Neo Solar also delivered NT$1.2B and Gintech sold over NT$1.4B during the month. All three had higher sales than they saw in March. The best result was delivered by Motech with 12% growth.

Motech shipped 320MW in Q1 with 30% to Asia, 30% to China, and 30% to the US. The remaining 10% was shipped to the EU. The company sold 4.4MW of modules in the period.  The expectations for Q2 are in the vicinity of 370MW of cells. Based on 1.1GW sold in 2011, Motech is expected to overcome MW shipments for last year. The company is ramping up production of a new cell named Leo with averages of 17.2% and is using its own high-performance, in-house wafer capacity of 500MW.

It appears that Neo Solar is heading in the same direction. The company shipped 730MW of cells in 2011. In Q1 there were 200MW shipped, and the company is hoping to see better results in Q2. NSP’s revenue for April has increased only slightly by 0.2% over March, while Gintech sales increased 3.9% over those in March. Gintech shipped 270MW of cells in first quarter of 2012. 

Year-over-year revenue performance for the month of April is still in the negative territory; however, for Motech this figure is only 8.7% below last year.  Since the ASP today is around 47% below the same period in 2011, this suggests higher shipments. Gintech is 13.2% negative on revenue and NSP is at 22.8%.

Another company, but much smaller in size, Tainergy was able to break out in April as well.  The company increased sales from March by 5%, and for the month of April year-over-year sales are only 5% off from results achieved last year. In comparison, larger in size but in the same space, DelSolar is off in sales for April by 37% and Solartech, which we have written about recently, is at negative 47%.